24 What You Should Know About Personal Productivity Services

24.1 Introducing the Mail Service

Easy integration with your own IMAP or SMTP mail server means you can handle your mail within the context of WebCenter Spaces. Send and receive, attach and retrieve, forward and delete—WebCenter Spaces exposes all the functionality required for working with your mail within WebCenter Spaces. Additionally, wherever a user name is displayed in WebCenter Spaces you can access the IMP context menu and send a mail message on the spot.

The Mail service exposes its features through the mail panel in the Sidebar and through integration with other services. For example, a Mail option appears on the IMP context menu, and when you post a new announcement, you are given the additional opportunity to mail it.

For more information about the Mail service, see Chapter 25, "Working with the Mail Service."

24.2 Introducing the Notes Service

The Notes service is provided exclusively to the WebCenter Spaces application. Notes provide a means of "jotting down" and retaining quick bits of personal information. The Notes services exposes its features in the Notes panel in the WebCenter Spaces application Sidebar as well in the Notes task flow.

For more information about the Notes service, see Chapter 26, "Working with the Notes Service."

24.3 Introducing the Recent Activities Service

The Recent Activity list provides a summary view of recent changes to a variety of services. You can specify the range of time to consider recent by selecting a time range from a list at the top of the task flow. Recorded activities include additions or revisions of pages, documents, discussion forums, lists, and the like.

The Recent Activities service exposes its functionality through the Recent Activity task flow.

For more information about the Recent Activities service, see Chapter 27, "Working with the Recent Activities Service."

24.4 Introducing the RSS Service

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) provides a means of accessing the content of many different Web sites from a single location—a news reader. Additionally, the Oracle WebCenter Spaces RSS service exposes application content through news feeds compatible with both RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 news readers.

The RSS service exposes its features in three ways:

• The RSS icon appears on the task flows that provide news feeds.

• The WebCenter Spaces application provides a dedicated RSS page where you can get feeds from all accessible group spaces for viewing in either RSS 2.0 or Atom 1.0 news readers.

• The RSS viewer is available for displaying public feeds from external sources. This task flow is available to both WebCenter Spaces and custom WebCenter applications.

For secure application content, your news reader must support BASIC authentication.

For more information about the RSS service, see Chapter 28, "Working with the RSS Service."

24.5 Introducing the Search Service

WebCenter Search enables you to search reliably and securely across all services deployed in your WebCenter application. These services include content from the Document Library, Discussions, tag clouds, Notes, and other WebCenter services.

In addition to search results from the native Search service, you can extend WebCenter Search to include Oracle Secure Enterprise Search results.

Features of the Search service are exposed in the task flows Search, which exposes all features available in the Search service; All Saved Searches, which provides a list of all of the saved searches you and other users have selected to share; and individual Saved Searches, which provides access to the results from a particular saved search.

In the WebCenter Spaces application, the Search service is additionally exposed in the Saved Searches panel in the Sidebar and on a dedicated Search page, available to both personal and group spaces.

For more information about the Search service, see Chapter 29, "Working with the Search Service."

24.6 Introducing the Worklist Service

The Worklist provides a personal, at-a-glance view of business processes that require your attention. These can include an invitation to become a group space member, a request for document review, and other types of business processes that come directly from your enterprise applications.

Worklist items come from a variety of sources. Some Worklist items are kicked off by events that are associated with an externally defined workflow. A workflow maps the route an item follows when an event kicks off. This type of workflow is defined in a Worklist server, such as Oracle BPM Worklist. The definition of these workflows is an administrative task.

Messages, alerts, and notifications might also come from the Oracle Service Delivery Platform (SDP, also known as User Messaging Service) Messaging Server. The Worklist task flow includes a control for accessing messaging preferences on this server. Use these controls to specify the channels over which to receive SDP Messaging Server messages and to define messaging filters.

Features of the Worklist service are exposed through the Worklist panel in the WebCenter Spaces application Sidebar, and to both custom WebCenter applications and the WebCenter Spaces application in the Worklist task flow.

For more information about the Worklist service, see Chapter 30, "Working with the Worklist Service."