The WebCenter Portal documentation is organized so that the tasks in a particular guide address a specific user persona. Each persona is associated with a set of skills required to work with WebCenter Portal, from basic to advanced. For example, this guide is aimed at the Developer persona.
This preface introduces you to the WebCenter Portal personas and describes the ways in which they might interact with WebCenter Portal. Each persona is assigned a default role provided out-of-the-box with WebCenter Portal. The default roles are given a unique set of permissions appropriate for the work that each persona will typically do. Note that you can modify these default roles or configure new roles to meet the unique needs of your organization.
The people who interact with WebCenter Portal typically work together as a team that is comprised of the following personas:
Karen is 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.
At the application level, Karen has permissions such as those granted to the default Authenticated-User
role, which may be customized for the specific needs of the organization. At the portal level, the portal Moderator
will likely assign Karen the Viewer
or Participant
role, or a custom role that offers a similar set of permissions.
For more information about roles and permissions, see the "About Roles and Permissions for a Portal" section in Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal.
Knowledge Worker Tasks in WebCenter Portal
Tasks that are typical of a knowledge worker like Karen include:
Connecting to and collaborating with other WebCenter Portal users by sharing information, files, and links; and by interacting through instant messaging, mail, message boards, discussions, wikis, and blogs
Uploading, sharing, and managing documents stored in WebCenter Content
Joining a team or project portal
Keeping up with changes in WebCenter Portal by receiving notifications when content is updated, exploring recommendations from other users, viewing the activities of the portals she is a member of and users she's connected to, viewing announcements, taking polls, and monitoring WebCenter Portal RSS feeds
Staying organized through the use of favorites, notes, calendars, lists, links to portal objects, and tags
Viewing and responding to worklist items
As Karen becomes more familiar with the functionality available in WebCenter Portal, she may begin to perform more advanced tasks, such as creating portals. As a more advanced knowledge worker, her role may evolve to overlap with application specialist tasks.
Information targeted for knowledge workers like Karen is in Using Oracle WebCenter Portal. Advanced tasks that overlap with those of an application specialist are covered in Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal.
Ari is 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). In a typical project, Ari coordinates the efforts of Karen (knowledge worker), Wendy (web developer), and Dave (developer).
At the application level, Ari has permissions such as those granted to the default Application Specialist
role, which may be customized for the specific needs of the organization. In a portal that Ari creates, he performs actions available to the Moderator
role to manage the portal.
For more information about roles and permissions, see the "About Roles and Permissions for a Portal" section in Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal.
Application Specialist Tasks in WebCenter Portal
Tasks that are typical of an application specialist like Ari include:
Planning and creating new portals
Editing and administering the portals he owns
Creating and building portal pages using the page editor (Composer) and the resource catalog to add and configure page components
Creating and managing portal assets, tools, and services
Managing shared assets and portal templates across all portals
Information targeted for application specialists like Ari is in Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal. To work with his personal view of the Home portal, Ari will also refer to Using Oracle WebCenter Portal.
Wendy is a web developer who focuses on delivering a consistent, branded look and feel to all portals. Wendy provides graphics designs and HTML markup from which Ari (application specialist in Portal Builder) or Dave (developer in JDeveloper) can create content or page style templates, skins, and so on. Once these assets are created, Ari can leverage them to create portal pages. Wendy typically does not interact with WebCenter Portal directly.
Web Developer Tasks in WebCenter Portal
Tasks that are typical of a web developer like Wendy include:
Developing a corporate portal look and feel
Designing new portal page templates
Information targeted for web developers like Wendy is in the "Creating a Look and Feel for Portals" chapter in Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal.
Dave is a developer who provides support for both portals and WebCenter Portal Framework applications:
Portals (Portal Builder)
Dave is primarily responsible for developing components (such as task flows, page templates, and content templates), which are published and leveraged by Ari (the application specialist). Dave primarily works with JDeveloper and leverages the WebCenter Portal Extension/WebCenter Portal Service Extension projects.
Framework Applications
Dave primarily works with JDeveloper to develop WebCenter Portal Framework applications. Once he has developed the application, he can package it as an EAR file and deploy it on the application server. In a typical environment, Dave would have JDeveloper configured with a SCM system and be working within a team with automated build and deploy processes.
Tasks that are typical of a developer like Dave include:
Building and maintaining WebCenter Portal Framework applications
Developing custom assets, like page templates and navigation components for portals in WebCenter Portal
Developing Java portlets
Developing and deploying task flows, managed beans, and other custom components
Developing custom personalization components
Maintaining the source control system
Maintaining a build system
Information targeted for developers like Dave is in Developing Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle JDeveloper.
Syed is 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. As the system administrator, Syed works with other tools such as Fusion Middleware Control and command line tools. He leverages Enterprise Manager to configure portal settings, and also configures integrations such as WebCenter Content and other Fusion Middleware products and Oracle applications.
In WebCenter Portal's Portal Builder, he has permissions such as those granted to the default Administrator
role, which provides exclusive access to administer and set global options for all portals (including the Home portal).
For more information about application level roles and permissions, see the "About Application Roles and Permissions" section in Administering Oracle WebCenter Portal.
Tasks that are typical of a system administrator like Syed include:
Uses Portal Builder administration to administer all portals (including import and export of portals) and security site-wide
Uses Portal Builder administration to manage site-wide system pages, business role pages, and personal pages
Uses Portal Framework application administration console to manage application-wide preferences, manage users and roles, manage assets, configure the content repository, create polls, register producers and external applications
Leads security, taxonomy, metadata, workflow, governance
Uses the management console for administrative functions
Executes command line utilities for administrative functions
Installs and configures production versions of developers' efforts
Performs patching of the production versions and the operating system
Creates clones and backups of the production versions
Performs restores of production versions
Monitors the operating system for issues with the production version
Deploys and redeploys applications
Information targeted for system administrators like Syed is in Administering Oracle WebCenter Portal and WebLogic Scripting Tool Command Reference.