1. Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal
  2. Working with WebCenter Portal Tools and Services
  3. Adding Personal Notes to a Portal

51 Adding Personal Notes to a Portal

Add Notes to a portal to allow portal members to set reminders of important events and other general information.

Permissions:

To perform the tasks in this chapter, you must be a portal manager or a portal member with the portal-level permissions Manage Security and Configuration or Manage Configuration.

At a minimum, you must have the following permissions:

  • Edit Pages (to add the Notes task flows to a page)

  • Edit Task Flows (to modify the task flow, if necessary)

  • One or more of the following advanced permissions: Create, Edit, and Delete Notes or Create Notes, Edit Notes, Delete Notes, and View Notes..

See About Roles and Permissions for a Portal.

Topics:

Prerequisites for Working with Notes

For notes to work in a portal, the portal manager or anyone with Manage Security and Configuration or Manage Configuration permission has to perform the following tasks:

  • Add the Notes task flow to the default resource catalog, because the Notes task flow is not included in the out-of-the-box default resource catalog.

  • Add the Notes task flow to a page in the portal, as described in Adding the Notes Task Flow to a Page.

Note:

For information on using the functions and features of notes, such as creating notes, editing notes, and so on, see Working with the Notes Task Flow.

About Notes

Notes provides useful features for writing yourself reminders in the form of personal notes. You can add notes by using the Notes task flow, which displays the personal notes of the currently logged in user (Figure 51-1). Only the notes that you create are displayed in the Notes task flow. No other user sees your notes, and you do not see any other user's notes.

Figure 51-1 A Notes Task Flow

Description of Figure 51-1 follows
Description of "Figure 51-1 A Notes Task Flow"

You can filter your Notes list by note titles. Filtering enables you to narrow the focus of your Notes to just the notes that match your filtering criteria. Consider devising a naming scheme for your notes to make the most of filtering.

You can link a note to an asset like a document or a list. While you can link to a new note (Figure 51-2), you cannot link to existing notes. All users who have access to the object can view the linked note too. See Adding and Linking to a Note in Using Portals in Oracle WebCenter Portal.

Figure 51-2 Linking an Announcement to a New Note

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Description of "Figure 51-2 Linking an Announcement to a New Note"

Adding the Notes Task Flow to a Page

For the steps to add the Notes task flow to a page, see Adding a Component to a Page.

Note:

The presence or location of the Notes task flow in the resource catalog depends on how the resource catalog is configured. For example, the Notes task flow is not available in the Default Portal Catalog, so you will only see an entry for it if it has been added to a custom resource catalog that has been made available to the page.

For more information, see Adding a Resource from the Resource Registry (in the Add Resource Catalog Item dialog, select Task Flows, then Design Time, then Notes). To use the custom resource catalog for editing portal pages, make sure it is Available, and set for use by pages in the portal, as described in Changing the Resource Catalogs in a Portal.

Setting Notes Task Flow Properties

The Notes task flow has associated properties, which users with sufficient privileges can access through the task flow's View Actions menu. For example, select Display Options to display the Display Options dialog (Figure 51-3).

Figure 51-3 Display Options on a Notes Task Flow

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Description of "Figure 51-3 Display Options on a Notes Task Flow"

See Also:

Setting Properties on a Component

To set Notes task flow properties:

  1. Open the page that contains the task flow in the page editor (see Opening a Page in the Page Editor).
  2. Select the task flow, then click the View Actions menu (Figure 51-4) and select the properties you want to set:

    Figure 51-4 View Actions Menu on a Notes Task Flow

    View Actions Menu for Notes

    • The Notes task flow does not have any unique properties, and therefore no parameters are shown in the Parameters dialog.

      The Display Options, Style, and Content Style properties affect the appearance and behavior of the task flow for all users. These properties are common to all task flows. For more information, see Setting Component Display Options Properties. and Setting Style and Content Style Properties.

      The Parameters and Display Options dialogs provide access to an Expression Language (EL) editor, which you can use to select or specify a variable value instead of a constant value. Click the Expression Editor icon icon next to a property, then select Expression Builder to open the editor.

      Note:

      When you enter EL in the Display Options dialog, the parser reports an error only if it detects invalid syntax, such as a missing closing bracket. Validation is performed only on syntax, not on the expression value. Generic Display Options are those cataloged in Table 10-1.

      EL validation is not performed on non-generic display options.

      If you need EL assistance, an application developer can provide an EL expression; see Expression Language Expressions in Developing for Oracle WebCenter Portal.

  3. Save your changes.

Working with the Notes Task Flow

WebCenter Portal offers a way for you to keep track of useful, sometimes vital, bits of information through notes.

For information about using the functions and features of notes, such as creating notes, editing notes, and so on, see Managing Your Notes in Using Portals in Oracle WebCenter Portal.