The following topics introduce the new and changed features in Oracle WebCenter Portal 11g Release 1, and provide pointers to additional information:
For system and platform-specific information for Oracle Fusion Middleware products for 11g Release 1, refer to Oracle Fusion Middleware System Requirements and Specifications. That guide describes how to find out what is certified and how to verify the requirements of the certification. Your system administrator performs these tasks prior to installing Oracle WebCenter Portal.
In addition to numerous bug fixes, WebCenter Portal 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.9.0) includes the following new and changed features:
Support for migration of the WebCenter Portal and Portal Framework application content from the Folders_g folder service to the FrameworkFolders folder service. See the "Migrating Folders_g to FrameworkFolders" appendix in Administering Oracle WebCenter Portal.
Support for running WebCenter Portal in both local and cloud environments:
Portal on-premise: WebCenter Portal deployment in a customer data center.
Oracle Private Cloud: provisioning and running WebCenter Portal on Oracle MWaaS; that is, using Oracle EM Cloud Control.
Oracle Public Cloud: provisioning and running WebCenter Portal on Oracle Java Cloud Service (JCS).
Support for upgrading a pre-11.1.1.8.0 portal to the current release. See Section 7.2.9, "Upgrading a Pre-11.1.1.8.0 Portal."
Addition of the childCreation property for the Show Detail Frame component to specify when the children (contents) of the Show Detail Frame component are created, thus reducing processing time. See childCreation in the "Attributes of a Show Detail Frame Component" table in Developing Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle JDeveloper.
Support for image renditions in Content Presenter display templates. See the "Using Image Renditions in Content Presenter Display Templates" section in Developing Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle JDeveloper.
WebCenter Portal 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.8.3) included the following new and changed features:
Four new page templates that provide efficiency and performance enhancements over the existing page templates. See "New Page Templates."
Support for the FrameworkFolders component that provides a scalable, high-performing folder service from Oracle WebCenter Content as an alternative to Folders_g. See "FrameworkFolders Support."
Four new page templates provide efficiency and performance improvements over the existing page templates. The files included are:
Four page templates: Skyros Side Navigation v2, Skyros Side Navigation (Stretch) v2, Skyros Top Navigation v2, and Skyros Top Navigation (Stretch) v2
One skin: Skyros v2
This is the preferred skin for the new page templates. Do not attempt to use the new Skyros v2 skin with existing page templates. Likewise, do not attempt to use the new page templates with the existing skins.
Two task flows: Portal Side Navigation and Portal Top Navigation
These task flows implement the navigation in the page templates, either in a side pane or as tabs along the top of a portal. The styling of the navigation in these task flows relies on the CSS in the skin file available in this patch. If you want to use these task flows in a page template that uses a different skin, be aware that the navigation may not look as expected due to CSS mismatches in the skin. However, if you copy and paste the navigation sections from the new Skyros v2 skin source code into your skin source code, you can achieve the expected results.
With WebCenter Portal 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.9.0), these files are pre-installed, and you will see them on the Shared Assets page, which is available if you have the permissions of the Administrator or Application Specialist role:
| Asset Type | File Names |
|---|---|
| Page Templates | pageTemplate_Skyros_Side_Navigation_Stretch_v2.ear
|
| Skins | skin_Skyros_v2_Skin.ear |
| Task Flows | taskFlow_Portal_Side_Navigation.ear
|
Perform the following steps to use the new page templates:
To set a new default page template for pages in the Home portal and all new portals (when the portal's template does not specify that a particular page template must be used), see the "Choosing a Default Page Template" section in Administering Oracle WebCenter Portal.
To change the page template used by an individual portal, see Section 7.3.2, "Changing the Page Template for a Portal."
To change the preferred skin used by a page template, see Section 21.5, "Setting the Preferred Skin for a Page Template."
For more information, see Chapter 21, "Working with Page Templates" and the "Developing Page Templates" chapter in Developing Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle JDeveloper.
Previously, Oracle WebCenter Portal supported only Folders_g. WebCenter Portal 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.8.3) enables new installations of Oracle WebCenter Portal to be integrated with FrameworkFolders. Existing installations of Oracle WebCenter Portal patched to 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.8.3) must continue to use Folders_g.
The FrameworkFolders component provides a scalable hierarchical folder interface for accessing and organizing repository content, and is the recommended enterprise folder service for Content Server.
Terminology changes:
| Prior Releases | 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.8.0) |
|---|---|
| WebCenter Portal: Spaces | WebCenter Portal |
| space | portal |
| space template | portal template |
| resource | asset |
Updated profile user interface that includes improved organization of profile information, click to edit, and clear profile photo functionality. See the "Managing Your Profile" chapter in Using Oracle WebCenter Portal. Additional documentation for the rich user profile is referenced under Portal Builder, Administration, and Development Environment.
Improved search experience (supported with Oracle SES 11.2.2.2) that includes faceted search and document thumbnails. See the "Searching for Information" chapter in Using Oracle WebCenter Portal and Chapter 55, "Adding Search to a Portal."
Simplified portal creation that includes in-place page creation. See Chapter 2, "Creating and Building a New Portal."
Redesigned portal edit and administration user interface (Portal Builder) that consolidates tasks into fewer steps. See Chapter 6, "Editing a Portal" and Chapter 7, "Administering a Portal."
Simplified page creation and editing: Web (for editing) and Data (for managing) views, inline resource catalog (with support for component drag-and-drop onto a page), and Select view. See Part I, "Working with Portal Pages."
Automatic update of portal navigation as new pages are created. See Section 12.2.2, "Creating a Page or Subpage in an Existing Portal."
"Lazy provisioning" of tools: WebCenter Portal configures the back-end server at first use of a tool rather than at portal creation to speed the successful creation of a new portal. See Section 2.1, "About Creating a New Portal."
Hierarchical page support (subpages). See Section 12.2, "Creating Pages or Subpages in a Portal."
Updated profile user interface that includes improved organization of profile information, click to edit, and clear profile photo functionality; new component properties for improved control of people connections and activity graph components. See Chapter 40, "Adding Activity Graphs and Recommendations to a Portal," Chapter 45, "Adding Connections to a Portal," and Chapter 53, "Adding Profiles to a Portal." Additional documentation for the rich user profile is referenced under End-User Experience, Administration, and Development Environment.
Device Settings that control how your portal pages render on different devices, such smart phones, tablets, and desktop browsers. Page variants can be created to target and optimally render a portal on specific groups of devices like iOS phones, iOS tablets, and others. See Section 7.11, "Administering Device Settings in a Portal," Chapter 9, "Managing Device Groups for a Portal," and Section 12.3, "Creating a Page Variant for a Device Group." Additional documentation for device support is referenced under Administration and Development Environment.
Responsive Content Presenter templates that provide an example of how you can use Content Presenter and CSS3 media queries to produce a responsive layout that adjusts to the width of the browser (for example, on smart phones, tablets, and desktop browsers). See Section 33.7, "Using Responsive Templates." Additional documentation for device support is referenced under Development Environment.
Simplified WebCenter Portal administration that includes a power user oriented experience with familiar concepts for legacy WebCenter Portal customers. See the "Managing Portals in Portal Builder Administration" part in Administering Oracle WebCenter Portal.
New profile configuration settings that include properties to specify whether to show the new or legacy profile user interface and to specify profile synchronization settings. See the "Managing People Connections" chapter in Administering Oracle WebCenter Portal. Additional documentation for the rich user profile is referenced under End-User Experience, Portal Builder, and Development Environment.
Device Settings that control how your portal pages render on different devices, such as smart phones, tablets, and desktop browsers. Page variants can be created to target and optimally render a portal on specific groups of devices like iOS phones, iOS tablets, and others. See the "Deploying Devices and Device Groups" section, the "Creating a Page Variant of a System Page for Device Groups" section, and the "Administering Device Settings" chapter in Administering Oracle WebCenter Portal. Additional documentation for mobile support is referenced under Portal Builder and Development Environment.
Impersonation, which allows a privileged user to impersonate another user for the purposes of verifying the other user's experience in WebCenter Portal and troubleshooting unexpected results. See the "Managing Impersonation" chapter in Administering Oracle WebCenter Portal.
Improved portal lifecycle tools that enable export/import and backup/recovery of one or more portals with minimal downtime. See the "Deploying Portals, Templates, Assets, and Extensions" and "Managing WebCenter Portal Backup, Recovery, and Cloning" chapters in Administering Oracle WebCenter Portal.
Integrated Oracle WebCenter Portal's Pagelet Producer user interface within WebCenter Portal's administrative user interface to make system administrators aware of the existence of Pagelet Producer pagelets and to allow them to make these pagelets available to end users. Integrating the UIs also provides Pagelet Producer developers to easily navigate from WebCenter Portal where they see the pagelets to the Pagelet Producer Admin UI so they can create new or edit existing pagelets. See the "Managing the Pagelet Producer" chapter in Administering Oracle WebCenter Portal.
New page performance analyzer that shows you how long individual components take to display on a portal page, as well as the overall time taken to display a page. This new tool is useful to developers who are performing first level performance analysis, customers who build their own pages, and any user who customizes pages in WebCenter Portal. See the "How to Identify Slow Page Components" section in Administering Oracle WebCenter Portal.
Updated profile user interface that includes improved organization of profile information, click to edit, and clear profile photo functionality; new component properties for improved control of people connections and activity graph components. See the "Introducing the People Connections Service," "People Connections Task Flow Binding Parameters," and "Integrating the Activity Graph" chapters in Developing Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle JDeveloper. Additional documentation for the rich user profile is referenced under End-User Experience, Portal Builder, and Administration.
Developers can use Expression Language (EL) to retrieve information about Device Settings. Device Settings control how your portal pages render on different devices including smart phones, tablets, and desktop browsers. See the "EL Expressions Related to Device Settings" section in Developing Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle JDeveloper. Additional documentation for mobile support is referenced under Portal Builder and Administration.
Responsive Content Presenter templates that provide an example of how you can use Content Presenter and CSS3 media queries to produce a responsive layout that adjusts to the width of the browser (for example, on phones, tablets, or personal computers). See the "Using Responsive Templates" section and the "Extending Responsive Templates" section in Developing Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle JDeveloper. Additional documentation for mobile support is referenced under Portal Builder.
Simplified custom shared library development and deployment. WebCenter Portal provides a new JDeveloper template that enables you to build custom components, such as task flows, data controls, and managed beans and deploy them in shared libraries directly to the WebCenter Portal server. See the "Developing Components for WebCenter Portal Using JDeveloper" chapter in Developing Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle JDeveloper.
Developers can optionally customize the name of child components when viewing the Child Component tab in the Component Properties dialog for the parent component. Doing so assigns a unique display name for any component to make it easily distinguishable from other components of the same type on the Child Components tab. See the "Customize the Display Name of Child Components" section in Developing Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle JDeveloper.
Restructured documentation library according to personas and their roles in WebCenter Portal:
Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal (this guide) covers information needed by an application specialist who works in Portal Builder to create and administer portals, their structure (hierarchy of pages, navigation, security), and their content (components on a page, layout, behavior, and so on).
Using Oracle WebCenter Portal covers information needed by a knowledge worker who typically uses WebCenter Portal to contribute and review content, participate in social interactions, and leverage the Home portal to manage her own documents and profile.
Administering Oracle WebCenter Portal covers information needed by a system administrator who fields requests from IT employees and business users to set up new machines; clone or back up existing applications systems and databases; install patches, packages, and applications; and perform other administration-related tasks.
Developing Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle JDeveloper covers information needed by a developer who primarily works with JDeveloper to provide support for both portals and WebCenter Portal Framework applications.
For more information, see "Who's Who."