Customizing the ADF interface

Webcenter Content has had and nice new ADF interface for some time now. Starting with version 12 of the product, this is very easy to install and use, as it no longer requires a separate domain and such.

However, there are some challenges for this interface...

For one it still does not have the records management functions, but then again this interface is meant for the average corporate user who will not (knowingly) work with records management. records managers can always turn to the classic interface, this one makes is easy for normal users to contribute and find documents.
Second issue is that since it is all coded in ADF it is not as easy as the classic interface to change. On the classic interface you make a custom component tweak some HTML code on a template and you're done.

At least 1 part of the customization is in fact quite easy. That is doing a corporate branding of the ADF interface. Face it, a product looks twice as inviting if it boast your corporate logo.

This information here is nothing magic, if you look for it, you can find this is the online manuals, but truth be told the procedure as it was described there was not all that clear. There are a few holes that I will attempt to fill in here by giving a concrete example of how to do it.

Some assumptions to explain the example:
- Working on the server with WCC 12c installed.
- The WLS server is installed in /app/fmw/
- The WCC shiphome directory is here: /app/fmw/wccontent
- The WCC domain is deployed here: /app/domain/content/
- The WCC weblayout directory is here: /app/domain/content/ucm/cs/weblayout
- WCC is installed with all the default port numbers

What we will do is change 2 elements of the interface: We will replace the blue Oracle logo in the top left corner by your own logo, and we will change the name of Content Server to something else let's say "Document Archive".

To achieve this, all managed servers,, UCM_serverX and WCCUI_serverX need to be up and running. The main tool we will be using is wlst.

Procedure:
1. Prepare the image.
Make sure the image is about the same size as the Oracle logo. This is not mandatory, but the alignment of the header may be off a bit if your logo is too high.
Second, make sure you logo has an URL. Yes the image needs to have a HTTP address. The easiest way to do this is to copy the logo into the images directory in the weblayout of Content Server:
 cp mylogo.png /app/domain/content/ucm/cs/weblayout/images/

2. Locate the WLST plugins.
You need to be in the correct directory before you launch wlst. There should be 2 files in the directory: wccadf-wlst-cmn-dependencies.jar and wccontent-wlst-dependencies.jar.
By default given the paths above you should find it like this:
cd /app/fmw/wccontent/plugins/wlst

3. Start WLST
/app/fmw/oracle_common/common/bin/wlst.sh

4. Make the changes.
The rest of the commands need to be done inside the WLST interface. We start by connecting to the WCCADF interface and then we use special commands to change the value of 2 configuration settings.
customBrandingLogo needs to be set to an HTTP path to your image.
customBrandingTitle needs to be set to whatever name you want to appear in the header of the pages.
wls/offline> connect('weblogic','<password>','t3://localhost:16255')

After receiving confirmation of being connected type the following commands:
updateWccAdfConfig(appName='Oracle WebCenter Content - Web UI', customBrandingLogo='http://<servername>:16200/cs/images/mylogo.png')
updateWccAdfConfig(appName='Oracle WebCenter Content - Web UI', customBrandingTitle='Document Archive')

The only thing left to do is to restart the managed server for the ADF UI and admire your results.

Assuming you do not like it and you want to revert back to the default,  how do you achieve that one?
In fact easier than you would think. Repeat the steps above to connect to the ADF interface with wlst.
Then you only need to enter the following 2 line to return to the default:

updateWccAdfConfig(appName='Oracle WebCenter Content - Web UI', customBrandingLogo='')
updateWccAdfConfig(appName='Oracle WebCenter Content - Web UI', customBrandingTitle='')

Yes it is enough to blank the values and restart the managed server of the ADF interface.

This is not an extensive modification of the interface, yet it's one of those easy to accomplish details that can make a world of difference for the user acceptance.
 
 

Introduction

Hello,

Yes, yet another one that starts a blog....

So what will I be writing about? Well about my experiences of the implementation of Oracle's Webcenter Content.
This blog is not officially affiliated to Oracle nor sponsored by Oracle.

I have been implementing this  solution since 1998, back then it was still called IntraDoc! by a company called IntraNet Solutions.
It's been 18 years and counting, so I think I might know a few things or tricks that may help you at some point.

I am not going to be very religious about posting. I am not going to blog simply because there has to be something new very week. As I discovered things which I think are worth mentioning, I will post.

Hope you will enjoy the upcoming posts.

Jurgen