43 Administering Device Settings
Permissions:
To perform the tasks in this chapter, you must have the WebCenter Portal Administrator role or a custom role that grants the following permission:
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Portal Server: Manage AllorPortal Server: Manage Configuration
For more information about permissions, see About Application Roles and Permissions.
About Device Settings
To successfully manage and administer device settings, you need to be familiar with the concepts described in this section.
Introduction to Device Settings
Enterprise portal users access portals from a range of devices, from smart phones to tablets to desktop browsers. Device settings and related features allow you to control exactly how your portal pages render on different devices. As a system administrator, you may be asked to support a new type of device or to change or improve the way portal pages render on certain devices.
WebCenter Portal includes the capability to recognize which type of device a given request comes from, and to render the portal properly on that device. As a system administrator, you use device settings to modify or fine-tune this device recognition and to specify which page templates and skins to associate with specific devices or classes of devices. It is through device settings that you control exactly how those skins and templates are applied.
Out-of-the-box, WebCenter Portal provides several page templates that are designed to render well on general classes of devices, like smart phones, tablets, or desktop browsers. You can choose to use these templates as they are, modify them to suit your needs, or create new ones.
As a system administrator, consider using device settings when:
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You need to add rendering support for a new device or class of devices.
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You discover a problem with the way portal pages render on a device or class of devices.
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You find that portal developers have created device-specific pages that are not being detected and are not showing up on the targeted devices.
What Are Devices?
A device is a representation in WebCenter Portal of a physical device, like a smart phone or tablet, that users use to interact with a portal. Each time a portal page is requested, WebCenter Portal determines the type of device from which the request originated. This information enables the portal to decide what category of devices or "device group" the device is associated with.
WebCenter Portal comes with a number of pre-configured devices out-of-the-box, such as iPhone, iPad, iPad mini, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, and others. You can also create new devices as needed.
Figure 43-1 shows some of the default devices listed in WebCenter Portal Administration.
Figure 43-1 List of Devices for Administrators
Description of "Figure 43-1 List of Devices for Administrators "
Each device has three primary characteristics: a name, a display name, and a user agent string:
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Name – A unique name for the device. One use of this name is that, for certain use cases, it can be located by a developer with an Expression Language expression.
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Display Name – This name will appear in the WebCenter Portal user interface.
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User Agent – A regular expression string that is used to identify the device from which a request originates. For example, an expression like
.*iPhone.+3G.+OS.+2_2.*matches a variety of iPhone 3G versions.Note:
The user agent string is a regular expression and conforms to the syntax specified by the Java platform (java.util.regex.Pattern). As such, certain special characters might need to be escaped if you want to match them. These characters include
[\^$.|?*+()and, in some cases, curly brace characters{}. For example, a parenthesis must be escaped with "\", as in\(iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X\). For further guidance, a good reference on regular expression syntax is recommended.
As a system administrator, you can create new devices and manage existing ones. For example, you might need to modify the user agent string so to correctly identify a new version of a device. Or, you may need to create new devices as needed. For more information, see Creating and Managing Devices.
What Are Device Groups?
A device group represents a collection of devices that share similar display requirements. Out-of-the-box, WebCenter Portal comes with several pre-configured device groups: Desktop Browsers, iOS Phones, Android Phones, iOS Tablets, and Android Tablets.
Device groups are populated with appropriate devices. For example, the iOS Phones device group includes iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, and others. As you create more devices, you can add them to existing groups, or create new groups as needed.
The advantage of device groups is that you do not have to configure display assets (page templates and skins) for each supported device. Rather, you can add multiple related devices to a group and specify the assets to be used by those devices. Figure 43-2 shows the Administration page for device groups. This page lets you create, edit, copy, upload, and perform other operations on device groups. For more information, see Creating and Managing Device Groups.
Figure 43-2 WebCenter Portal Administration: Device Settings Page
Description of "Figure 43-2 WebCenter Portal Administration: Device Settings Page"
Other Related Concepts
The following features are related to device settings. They include the default device group, page variants, and the fallback page.
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Default Device Group – One device group is always specified as the default. Out-of-the-box, the default device group is Desktop Browsers. This means that, by default, all pages in a new portal are associated with the Desktop Browsers device group. If a request comes from an unrecognized device, the portal page is rendered according to the default device group settings.
Note:
The base page is always rendered on devices that belong to the default device group.
The default device group is associated with the portal template feature (portal templates are templates on which new portals are based). Any portal created from a portal template automatically receives that template's default device group. Likewise, if you create a portal template from a portal, the default device group associated with that portal is placed into the template.
For a discussion of how WebCenter Portal selects which device group to use, see Understanding How Device Settings are Applied.
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Page Variant – A page variant is an alternative view of an existing (or "base") page designed to be used with specific devices. The base page from which the variant is derived and the page variant itself have the same URl, security settings, parameters, and so on; however, they are designed with specific rendering characteristics appropriate for the targeted device. When you create a page variant, you can specify a device group and page style with which to associate it.
For portals that do not use responsive page templates, you can define page variants that optimize the display of a portal page for a specific device group. At runtime, WebCenter Portal can check if a page variant exists for the device being used to display a portal page, and displays the page using the page variant definition. By default, this check is not performed. To turn it on, see Enabling Page Variants for Device Groups.
Page variants have several uses. Suppose you find that one of your company intranet portal pages returns an error on a particular device. For example, such an error may occur when a page containing Flash video is rendered on an Apple device. In this case, you can create a variant of that page that will be used only when the page is requested for an Apple device, but not for others. In this case, the variant includes an image, perhaps, instead of the Flash video, and the error disappears.
Page variants are typically created by application specialists; however, only an administrator can create page variants for system pages. For example, you might want to create a login page variant suitable for a smart phone.
For information on creating page variants for system pages, see Creating a Page Variant of a System Page for Device Groups. For information on creating page variants for portal pages, see Creating a Page Variant for a Device Group in Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal.
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Fallback Page – One other related concept is the fallback page. Whenever a page does not have a page variant, then the base page is rendered by default; however, you can override this behavior so that no page is displayed in this circumstance.
Note:
When a page's fallback behavior is set to Display No Page, any navigational links to that page are hidden from view. In other words, any navigational links that would result in a "Page Not Available for Device" message are hidden from users.
You can set fallback for individual pages or for all portal pages. For more information about fallback, see Setting Page Behavior for a Specific Page When No Page Variant Exists in Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal.
Basic Use Case: Adding Support for a New Device
Here is a use case to help you understand when you may need to work with device settings for the portal you administer.
Suppose a new mini-tablet is released with a different screen resolution and size than the currently supported tablet devices. In fact, a user discovers that the company intranet portal does not render properly on this device–there is a lot of white space and the company logo doesn't look right.You are asked to support this new device. The basic steps are:
Understanding How Device Settings are Applied
Figure 43-3 illustrates the flow of how WebCenter Portal handles requests from multiple different devices.
Figure 43-3 How the Portal Handles Requests from Different Devices
Description of "Figure 43-3 How the Portal Handles Requests from Different Devices"
As Figure 43-3 shows, when a request comes in to the server, the user agent string is examined in the header of the request. Next, WebCenter Portal looks for a device that matches that user agent (a regular expression string).
If multiple devices are defined whose user-agents can potentially map to the incoming user-agent, then the server tries to map the request to the most appropriate device. The most appropriate device is one whose user-agent has the maximal possible match.
When a device is identified, WebCenter Portal looks to see if it is in a device group. If it is in more than one group, the first one in the list of device groups for the portal is used. See also Ordering Device Groups.
If no device is identified, then WebCenter Portal assigns the "default device group" to the current request.
Finally, the appropriate skin, page template associated with the device group, and page variant (if one exists and page variants are enabled) are returned and the page renders on the device. If a page does not have a page variant, or if page variants are disabled, then the base page is rendered, by default; however, you can override this behavior so that no page is displayed in this circumstance. For more information, see Setting the Page Behavior for a Portal When No Page Variant Exists in Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal.
Creating and Managing Devices
This section explains how to create and manage devices:
Note:
In some cases, you may be unable to view page variants after a device configuration is added or modified on the Device Settings page. In this case, log out and log in again to clear the cache, and after that, the device will be recognized correctly. Additionally, make sure that page variants are enabled (seeEnabling Page Variants for Device Groups).
Creating a New Device
To create a new device:
- Use the Optional Attributes section to manage attributes such as display resolution height and width. You can edit their default values as required.
Note:
Optional attributes do not affect the way portals are rendered on a device. They exist simply to provide a way to specify information about a device that may be useful to a page designer. Portal designers can use Expression Language to access the values of device attributes.
Figure 43-4 Specifying Optional Attributes
Description of "Figure 43-4 Specifying Optional Attributes"
Editing a Device
To edit an existing device:
Note:
In some cases, you may be unable to view page variants after a device configuration is added or modified on the Device Settings page. In this case, log out and log in again to clear the cache, and after that, the device will be recognized correctly. Additionally, make sure that page variants are enabled (see Enabling Page Variants for Device Groups).
Copying a Device
Creating a copy of a device is useful when you want to:
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Create a backup of a device.
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Update a device while keeping the original in use.
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Use a built-in device as the starting point for creating a new device.
To copy a device group:
Filtering the List of Devices
The Filter field lets you filter the list of devices shown in the Devices table. Filtering searches on device group names, display names, descriptions, and user agents.
Creating and Managing Device Groups
A device group represents a collection of devices that share similar display requirements. This section explains how to create and manage device groups to support.
See also Basic Use Case: Adding Support for a New Device.
Note:
In some cases, you may be unable to view page variants after a device configuration is added or modified on the Device Settings page. In this case, log out and log in again to clear the cache, and after that, the device will be recognized correctly. Additionally, make sure that page variants are enabled (see Enabling Page Variants for Device Groups).
Editing a Device Group
You can change the display name of a device group, edit the description that explains the purpose of the device group, and change the skin and/or template associated with a device group. You cannot change the device group name that is internally used to identify it.
To edit the basic details of a device group:
Copying a Device Group
You can create copies of device groups. This is useful when you want to:
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Create a backup of a device group.
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Update a device group while keeping the original in use.
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Use a built-in device group as the starting point for creating a new device group.
When you create a copy of a device group, the copy is marked as hidden regardless of the status of the original device group.
To copy a device group:
- In the Copy dialog, specify the name, display name, and description of the device group (Figure 43-6).
Showing and Hiding Device Groups
All device groups, whether built-in or custom, can be marked as hidden or available. A check mark next to a device group's name indicates that the device group is available to use. An empty check box indicates that the device group is not available for use in portals (Figure 43-7). This setting also controls the available selections when you create page variants. If a device group is hidden, it does not show up as an option to use with a new page variant, and you can't create a page variant with that group. The show/hide settings are inherited from the portal administration settings; however, they can be overridden at the portal level by a portal manager. See also Creating a Page Variant for a Device Group in Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal.
When you create a device group, by default, it is marked as unavailable.
Figure 43-7 Available and Hidden Device Groups
Description of "Figure 43-7 Available and Hidden Device Groups"
To show or hide a device group:
Setting a Default Device Group
The built-in device group named Desktop Browsers is the default device group in WebCenter Portal. All new pages that you create are automatically associated with the default device group.
On the Device Groups tab, Default appears next to the device group that is set as default.
To set a device group as default:
Ordering Device Groups
When a user accesses WebCenter Portal using a device, portals are rendered using the assets like page template and skin associated with the device group to which that device belongs. However, a device may be associated with multiple device groups. In such cases, the ordering of the device groups in the Device Groups tab determines the precedence of device groups.
To define the order of the device groups:
- On the Device Groups tab, use the ordering icons to define the order of the device groups:
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Move to top: Click to move the selected device group to the top in the list of device groups displayed.
This implies that if a device belongs to more than one device group, then the topmost device group must take precedence.
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Move up: Click to move the selected device group one level up in the list of device groups displayed.
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Move down: Click to move the selected device group one level down in the list of device groups displayed.
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Move to bottom: Click to move the selected device group to the end in the list of device groups displayed.
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Filtering Device Groups
The Filter field lets you filter the list of device groups shown in the Device Group table. Filtering searches on device group names, display names, and descriptions.
Deleting a Device Group
If you no longer require a device group, you may want to delete it. However, you can delete only the custom device groups, and not the built-in device groups.
Note:
If a device group is deleted, page variants associated with that device group will still exist (they are not deleted). For important guidelines related to deleting a device group, see Guidelines and Best Practices for Device Settings.
To delete a device group:
Enabling Page Variants for Device Groups
By default, WebCenter Portal does not check for page variants at runtime. For portals that have page variants defined for different device groups, you must turn on the runtime check for page variants by setting the wcDeviceSupport attribute to true. By default, this attribute is set to false.
Note:
Portal templates and skins that are specific to a device group are honored by default. Only the check for page variants is disabled.
- On the Attributes page, click the Actions icon for the
wcDeviceSupportattribute and select Edit Attribute.
Managing Device and Device Group Lifecycles
You can download device groups and devices to a file, and then upload them to another WebCenter Portal instance. For example, if you want to move your device groups from a staging to a production server, use the lifecycle mechanism described in the following sections:
Note:
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You can only download device groups or devices that you have copied or created. You cannot download any of the built-in device groups.
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When you upload or download a device group, all artifacts associated with that device group are included, including any devices associated with that group. For example, suppose you create a new device and add it to a group, then download the group. When you upload that group to another server, that new device is automatically added to the list of devices.
Previewing Devices
WebCenter Portal includes a preview feature that lets you preview how pages and page variants will render on a particular device. For more information, see Previewing a Mobile Device Variant of a Page in Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal.
Guidelines and Best Practices for Device Settings
This section discusses best practices for working with device settings.
Avoid Changing the Default Device Group for a Production Portal
Changing the default device group in a production portal can lead to unexpected behaviors. It is best to avoid changing the default device group after your portal is in production.
Avoid Deleting a Custom Device Group for a Production Porta
If you delete a custom device group for a production or portals, the server does not warn you that existing portals use that device group, leading to incorrect page renderings in some cases.
If You Accidentally Delete a Device Group
You can create another device group with the same device group name as the one that was deleted. When a device group is deleted, the page variants are not removed from the system. These page variants are associated using the name of the device group. Recreating a device group with the same will bring back all those pages.
If You Need Information About the Requesting Device
In some cases, it is useful to obtain information about the device used to access the portal and discover which device settings the portal is mapping the device to. For your convenience, Discovering Device Attributes: A Sample Task Flow, lists code that a developer can use to create a task flow that echoes back this device information.
Discovering Device Attributes: A Sample Task Flow
Expression Language expressions can be used to return device attributes. Sample code that can be used for this purpose is presented in EL Expressions Related to Device Settings in Developing for Oracle WebCenter Portal. A developer can use this code to create a task flow that returns device information that can be useful in troubleshooting a problem with the way a portal renders on a given device. Figure 43-10 shows the output from a task flow created with this sample code.
