Preface

This manual describes how to use Oracle Application Server Portal (OracleAS Portal) to build a portal, and how to use that portal to your best advantage. Assuming that all configuration tasks have been completed (see the Oracle Application Server Portal Configuration Guide for those tasks), this book assists with considering how best to construct your portal, how to build the portal with attractive and professional looking pages, how to load those pages with content, and how to make that content easy for others to find.

You will find the Oracle Application Server Portal Configuration Guide on the Oracle Portal documentation page of the Oracle Technology Network:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/ias/portal/documentation.html

Intended Audience

This manual is divided into four volumes:

• Volume 1, Interacting With Your Portal, provides information about moving around the portal, setting personal options, and locating content within the portal's pages.

• Volume 2, Setting Up Your Portal, provides information about creating a page group framework and preparing the portal for others to populate with content.

• Volume 3, Building Your Portal, provides information about OracleAS Portal's basic and advanced page design features for creating pleasing, useful pages.

• Volume 4, Advanced Portal, provides information about using WebDAV with OracleAS Portal, translating portal content, setting up an approval workflow, and enhancing your portal's performance. Volume 4 also contains appendixes that supplement the information provided in all four volumes.

There are many definitions of the term user as it pertains to this manual. Each volume is dedicated to one or more particular sets of users. These sets are described in the next few sections.

What Is a Public User?

Public users are users who access a portal without logging in. When users first access a portal, they access it as public users, whether or not they have the ability to log in. Public users can view any page that has been marked as Public by the page manager, but they cannot edit the content of pages. Volume 1 defines the concept of a portal and assists public users with locating content and viewing pages.

What Is an Authenticated User?

Authenticated users are users who have logged in to a portal. Authenticated users can edit and delete the objects they create, such as pages, styles, and content. Authenticated users can also have additional responsibilities or be granted additional specific privileges on objects created by other users. An authenticated user's privileges may vary from object to object.

Authenticated users will use Volume 1 for basic things like learning to navigate the portal and locating portal content, and Volume 3 for things like creating pages and editing and deleting objects.

What Is a Content Contributor? A content contributor is an authenticated user who can add content to a page. The person who creates (or manages) a page decides who can contribute to the page. There are two levels of contributor:

• The page privilege Manage Content

  Contributors with this privilege can add new items to the page and edit and delete any item in the page. Such users can also add and remove portlets.

• The page privilege Manage Items With Approval

  This page privilege is available when approvals and notifications are enabled for the page's page group. Contributors with this privilege can add items to the page and edit any existing item. Revisions and additions are not published in the portal (that is, displayed to other users) until they are approved. Contributors can track the items waiting for approval through the My Approval Status portlet. Such users can also personalize page content.

What Is a Page Designer? A page designer (also known as page manager) is an authenticated user with the page privilege Manage on a page. A user with this privilege can perform any action on the page and can create sub-pages under the page. The page designer is often responsible for designing the layout (or region configuration) of the page and assigning privileges on the page to other users (for example, to determine who can add content to the page). The scope of a page designer's control over a page may be limited if the page is based on a template.

Page designers will find Volume 3 most useful for completing their tasks.

What Is a Page Group Administrator? A page group administrator is an authenticated user who has full privileges on the structure, style, and content of a page group, and can view, edit, and delete any object in that page group, including pages and styles that are otherwise secure from unprivileged users. A page group administrator can also assign page group privileges to other users.

When a page group is created, the user who created the page group is automatically assigned as its administrator. This user can also edit the page group to assign a different page group administrator.

Volume 2 assists page group administrators in establishing the page group structure and choosing settings that are appropriate for the target user base.

Documentation Accessibility

Our goal is to make Oracle products, services, and supporting documentation accessible, with good usability, to the disabled community. To that end, our documentation includes features that make information available to users of assistive technology. This documentation is available in HTML format, and contains markup to facilitate access by the disabled community. Accessibility standards will continue to evolve over time, and Oracle is actively engaged with other market-leading technology vendors to address technical obstacles so that our documentation can be accessible to all of our customers. For more information, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program Web site at

http://www.oracle.com/accessibility/

Accessibility of Code Examples in Documentation

Screen readers may not always correctly read the code examples in this document. The conventions for writing code require that closing braces should appear on an otherwise empty line; however, some screen readers may not always read a line of text that consists solely of a bracket or brace.

Accessibility of Links to External Web Sites in Documentation

This documentation may contain links to Web sites of other companies or organizations that Oracle does not own or control. Oracle neither evaluates nor makes any representations regarding the accessibility of these Web sites.

TTY Access to Oracle Support Services

Oracle provides dedicated Text Telephone (TTY) access to Oracle Support Services within the United States of America 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For TTY support, call 800.446.2398.

Related Documents

For more information, see the following manuals in the OracleAS Portal documentation set:

• Oracle Application Server Portal Configuration Guide

• Oracle Application Server Portal Error Messages Guide

• Oracle Application Server Portal Developer's Guide

You may also find the following manuals from the Oracle Application Server documentation set useful:

• Oracle Application Server Concepts

• Oracle HTTP Server Administrator's Guide

• Oracle Application Server Web Cache Administrator's Guide

Conventions

The following text conventions are used in this document:

Browser Recommendations

Use one of the following Web browsers with OracleAS Portal:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0

• Netscape 7.2

• Mozilla 1.7

• Firefox 1.0

• Safari 1.2

You may encounter JavaScript errors if you use a browser older than the recommended minimum.

Cache Settings

Your browsers default settings are sufficient for displaying valid portal content. If those defaults have been altered, you should check that their values do not inadvertently disable valuable cache capabilities. To check your browser's cache settings, perform the following steps:

In Internet Explorer:

1. From the Tools menu, choose Internet Options.

2. Click the General tab to bring it forward.

3. In the Temporary Internet File section, click the Settings button.

4. In the Check for newer versions of stored pages radio group, select Automatically.

   This is the default option. You can also select Every visit to the page or Every time you start Internet Explorer.

   
   

   Note: Do not select Never. Selecting Never means the browser will never check for newer versions of stored pages, and the cache will never be updated.

   
   

5. Click OK.

6. Click OK.

In Netscape/Mozilla:

1. From the Edit menu, choose Preferences.

2. Expand the Advanced node.

3. Click Cache.

4. In the Document in cache is compared to document on network radio group, select When the page is out of date.

   This is the default setting. You can also select Every time I view the page or Once per session.

   
   

   Note: Do not select Never. Selecting Never means the browser will never check for newer versions of stored pages, and the cache will never be updated.

   
   

5. Click OK.

Image Settings

Sometimes the browser setting that controls the automatic loading of images is disabled to increase performance on low bandwidth connections. A problem that commonly occurs when images are not loaded automatically is that, once logged out, you cannot log in again without closing and re-invoking the browser. To avoid this problem, make sure images are loaded automatically.

To ensure that images are loaded automatically:

In Internet Explorer:

1. From the Tools menu, choose Internet Options.

2. Click the Advanced tab to bring it forward.

3. Scroll through the list of options to the Multimedia node, and select Show Pictures.

4. Click OK.

In Netscape:

1. From the Edit menu, choose Preferences.

2. Click Advanced.

3. Select the Automatically load images check box.

4. Click OK.