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A must read for people in the know
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O A U G F E A T U R E
oaug feature
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I was looking for a single source of truth where
people “in the know” engage in sharing their Oracle
experiences, tips and suggestions. It was sheer serendipity
to discover the OAUG Knowledge Factory™ at
COLLABORATE 08. Since then, I have returned time
and again to this oasis of knowledge.
I was among some of the first participants to take
advantage of this unique opportunity get to know more
users, implementers and experts in the Oracle Universe.
As a result, my overall awareness and knowledge of
Oracle’s latest offerings and releases has increased
manifold, which would not have been possible through
any other method.
It would be prohibitively costly and logistically
impossible to assemble such a team of experts, other than
virtually, that is now available courtesy of the OAUG
Knowledge Factory. A free member benefit, this priceless
forum can help you network with users and implementers
of the Oracle products you may be using. The OAUG
Knowledge Factory can serve as your collaboration portal,
learning portal, presentation portal, support portal and
reference portal. Please read on to find out how you can
Knowledge Factory™
Educate. Network. Influence.
By Mohan Dutt Project ManagerVeriSign, Inc.
The Oracle portfolio of
offerings is expanding
rapidly with new technologies,
product suites, releases
and acquisitions, making it
challenging to stay abreast of
the latest information.
10 WAYS TO USE THE
oaug insight spring 2009
oaug.org 25
make the best use of this unique
OAUG offering.
If you are looking to catalyze your
performance and help your company’s use of
Oracle products go from good to great, don’t
miss this opportunity to network and collaborate
with the “who’s who” of the Oracle World. I
encourage every OAUG member to tap into the
great resources that are available in the OAUG
Knowledge Factory. It is a priceless opportunity,
offered for free to OAUG members!
Here are ten ways that you can use the
Knowledge Factory and obtain the maximum
benefit from this Web 2.0 community.
It is difficult to miss the Knowledge Factory
logo on the top right-hand corner of the OAUG
home page. The “Enter” button invites you to
discover the rich nuggets of information inside
(Figure 1). Use your OAUG member login and
password to enter the Knowledge Factory.
Search for ContentThe landing page allows one to
“Search for Content.” Enter any
keyword and the powerful search
engine mines all the content and returns results matching
the nearest context (Figure 2). One can also search for
community members using the “Search for People” field.
1Figure 1
Figure 2
O A U G F E A T U R E 26
Profile SearchGet in touch with
Knowledge Factory
members using the profile search by clicking
on the “Profiles” tab. One can also search
for community members by entering a name
or keyword. Once you enter any search
keyword and click on the “Search People”
button, the results page shows profile
matches. The illustration shows “Profiles
Search” using the keyword “contracts”
(Figure 3). A community member whose
profile includes the keyword is returned
in the search results. One can also use the
“Advanced Search” feature and use multiple
search criteria to find member profiles.
Set up Your Knowledge Factory ProfileClick on the “Manage
Posts/Profile” link on the Knowledge
Factory home page (Figure 4) and then
click on the “About Page” tab to navigate to
your user profile. The “About Me” tab is for
providing your pen profile (Figure 5). The
“Personal Profile” tab is where you can enter
your contact information, such as e-mail
address and telephone number, for other
members to use to contact you. Information
on this page can be set to “Public” so that
it is visible to everyone or “Private.” The
“Professional Experience” tab can be used to
indicate applications used, areas of expertise
and industry worked. It is important to
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3
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
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insert information on all the tabs so that
the “Profile Search” feature can retrieve
your name when community members
search by keywords.
Make a QuickpostUse the “Submit
a Quickpost” box
(Figure 6) to submit a
question that would appear on the “Blogs”
tab (Figure 7). One can also upload an
attachment for the post. The quickpost
inherits the default values for blog posts.
For more advanced options, use blog posts.
Write a Blog PostClick on the “Manage
Posts/Profile” link on the
Knowledge Factory home
page (Figure 4), and then navigate to the
landing page for blog posts. Click on either
the “Add New” or “New Post” link to create
a new blog post (Figure 8). The blog post
editor has a look-and-feel of MS Word and
one can do all the formatting one does using
the text editor (Figure 9). One can also add
categories and tags (Figure 10) so the post
appears within a specific category on the
portal and is indexed and search made more
efficient with the presence of the tags. Click
on the “Save and Publish” button. Your blog
is now published! As evident from the steps,
4
5
“ I encourage every OAUG
member to tap into the
great resources that are
available in the OAUG
Knowledge Factory.”
Figure 6
Figure 7
Figure 8
28 O A U G F E A T U R E
blogging or publishing on the Web does not
require any software coding as the blogging
engine does the work behind the scenes and
takes care of the formatting and publishing
on the Knowledge Factory portal.
Upload AttachmentsUse the quickpost or
advanced post feature to
upload attachments with
your blog posts (Figure 11). Attachments
can be images, presentations and white
papers. One can even upload a video! The
blog post can have the presentation abstract
while the attachment would contain the
presentation or white paper that can be
downloaded.
Comment on a Blog Post or Answer a Question
Click on the “Add comment” link below
a blog post and add your comment. This
is also the place where one can answer
questions asked via a quickpost (Figure 12).
Vote on the ContentEach blog post has a
link to vote to indicate
whether the content was
helpful to you (Figure 13). Perhaps one can
use this feature to vote on a post for which
they would like to attend a presentation or
review a white paper in the future.
6
7
8
Figure 9
Figure 11
Figure 10
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oaug insight spring 2009
Search the Conference Paper DatabaseSearch the
comprehensive database of previous
conference white papers and presentations
in the same place you go to get all the
latest Oracle Applications information —
the OAUG Knowledge Factory (Figure
14). One can search by keyword, author,
company, conference and tracks.
Subscribe to RSS FeedsYou do not need to log
in to the Knowledge
Factory everyday and
conduct a mini data mining operation
to gather all the nuggets of priceless
information from the experts. All the
new posts will appear on your RSS
Reader. The OAUG Knowledge Factory
already has RSS embedded on each page.
This feature enables you to subscribe to
OAUG Knowledge Factory in a similar
way you subscribe to a list server. The
only difference is that the feeds appear
on your RSS Reader home page.
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10
“The OAUG Knowledge
Factory is a collaborative
knowledge resource for
OAUG members worldwide
who are “in the know” –
or want to be.”
Figure 12
Figure 13
Figure 14
O A U G F E A T U R E 30
STEP 1.Select an RSS Reader of your choice. It can be
Web-based like Google Reader or on your desktop
using free software such as FeedReader. The
RSS Reader is equivalent to your inbox when you
subscribe to the OAUG Knowledge Factory.
Step 2.Log in to the OAUG Knowledge Factory
and navigate to the category for which you
want to subscribe. For example, you want
to subscribe to “E-Business Suite,” click on
the E-Business Suite link under “Categories”
and the Category home page will open.
Step 3.Near the search box, click on the orange icon for
RSS feeds. Click on the orange icon (Figure 15)
and a new page will open with several XML tags.
Step 4.Copy the URL (Figure 16). For example, the URL
for the E-Business Suite category is http://www.
kf.oaug.org/community/feeds/rss.asp?cat=6249.
Step 5.Log in to your RSS Readers and subscribe to the
feed using the URL above (Figure 17). Viola!
In a second, all the posts from the E-Business
Suite category on the OAUG Knowledge Factory
appear in your RSS Reader “Inbox” (Figure 18).
Steps two through four can be completed for as
many categories/pages as you select. For those
who are visually orientated, the screenshots for
the above steps are available as an attachment
on a blog post. Permalink: http://mohan-dutt-1.
kf.oaug.org/default.asp?item=2189797.
Quick and Easy Steps to Set Up RSS Feeds
Figure 15
Figure 16
Figure 17
Figure 18
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Visit your RSS Reader page daily and check for the latest
posts. If you want to read more about the post, click on its
subject hyperlink and you will be redirected to the relevant page
on the OAUG Knowledge Factory. Of course, please visit the
OAUG Knowledge Factory many times a week to check for new
content for which you may want to create a RSS subscription!
The OAUG Knowledge Factory is a collaborative
knowledge resource for OAUG members worldwide who
are “in the know” – or want to be. The portal is completely
community-driven and evolutionary in nature. It is left to the
imagination and innovation of fellow members to leverage
this platform to interact with peers and experts to share and
enhance our understanding of the Oracle Applications family.
WEB 2.0 – The term “Web 2.0” describes the
changing trends in the use of World Wide Web
technology and Web design that aim to enhance
creativity, communications, secure information sharing,
collaboration and functionality of the Web. Web 2.0
concepts have led to the development and evolution of
Web culture communities such as social-networking sites
like the OAUG Knowledge Factory. Although the term
suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does
not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but
rather to changes in the ways end-users utilize the Web.
BLOG – The term is a contraction of “Web log” and is
usually maintained by an individual with regular entries
of commentary. Entries are commonly displayed in
reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used
as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a
blog. The OAUG Knowledge Factory provides the
option for members to create their individual blog.
RSS – The term is an acronym for “Really Simple
Syndication” and is a family of Web-feed formats
used to publish frequently updated works, such as
blog entries. Readers subscribe to RSS Feeds using
software which can be Web-based or desktop-based.
PERMALINK– A permalink is a portmanteau word
made from permanent link. It is a URL that points to
a specific blog that remains unchanged indefinitely.
TRACKBACK URL – A trackback is an
acknowledgment or link back. It is a method for
Web authors to request notification when somebody
links to one of their documents. This enables
authors to keep track of who is linking and referring
to their articles. The OAUG Knowledge Factory
supports the feature with a “Trackback URL” with
every entry. This URL is used by the commenting
blogger, whose blogging software would track
information about the new entry to this URL.
Mohan Dutt is a project manager at VeriSign,
Inc. in Mountain View, Calif. Mohan is an active
OAUG volunteer; he founded the Procurements
and Contracts Special Interest Group (SIG) and
was also the Technology Committee Chair. Mohan
has presented nearly 40 white papers at Oracle
conferences around the world and was honored as
the 2007 OAUG Member of the Year. Mohan is
always looking for an engaging conversation with
Oracle Community members and blogs everyday on
the Oracle Certified Professionals Blog at http://
ebizocp.blogspot.com and on the Oracle EBS
R12 Blog at http://oracler12.blogspot.com.
GLOSSARY
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