Keeping Up with Changes

1-4 Oracle Fusion Middleware Users Guide for Oracle Portal item may or may not replace an existing version as the current copy; a copy of the old version may or may not be retained. While keeping older versions handy makes it easy to track changes made to a document over time, such records may not be necessary for all items. To help you control when people see your work, you can specify a publish date for an item, which means it won’t be visible to anyone except you before the date you supply. You can also set an expiration date to automatically hide items that are no longer relevant or important. And if item level security is enabled, then you can state who can see, edit, or manage the items that you contribute. Again, your page group administrator controls which of these options are available to you. Contact that person if you want to take advantage of some of the features just described.

1.3 Finding Content

Oracle Portal provides a robust search component to help you find the content you’re looking for. Depending on how the authors of your portal have set things up, your search strings can be compared against a wide variety of classifications, including the name of the item, the author, a description, and keywords associated with the purpose or theme of the item. Oracle Portal also enables you to instigate more complex searches using boolean logic, such as all pay stubs belonging to a certain employee, or all corporate announcements made on a given date. In addition, you can save your searches and assign them unique names so that you can use them again later without having to re-enter a complicated series of terms. Keep in mind that although Portal provides all these capabilities, it’s up to the people who build your portal to make them available to you and other users.

1.4 Personalizing Your Portal

Like all aspects of Oracle Portal, the extent to which you can personalize your interface depends upon the level of privileges that have been granted to you by a page designer or administrator. Assuming you have log-in privileges, you will most likely be able to select your own home page and your own log-in password, and you might be able to select the page style you prefer as well. A page style determines the colors and fonts in which the pages you view are rendered. At the page level, you may have complete authority over your own personal page or home page, but none at all on other pages that are available to the entire company. On some pages, you may be able to personalize portlets to suit your own needs and preferences, or you may be able to hide certain portlets completely so that they don’t appear on your page. Going a step further, you may even be able to add to or delete portlets from a page. You’ll know you can add content to a page if you see the Edit link in the top right corner of your page. If you don’t see it, you don’t have the proper privileges.