Goodbye & Thanks to MN; Hello TFG

 

Time flies when you’re having fun, it feels like I only recently started working at MN, but truth be told, it is already 9 years ago. I started as a Junior Oracle Developer at MN after my bachelor degree and in these 9 years I became an all-round Fusion Middleware developer and solution architect within this company.

A great company, lovely colleagues and always a technical challenge ahead. I could certainly enjoy another 9 years at this company, however, it is time to take the next step. Not because I do not enjoy working at MN anymore, but because I am ready for a new challenge.

I want to thank MN for all the great times and for giving me the opportunity to develop myself in all these years.

What new challenge lies ahead? After some consideration, I have decided to become self-employed as an independent contractor as part of the The Future Group cooperative. 

I like to give a special thanks to Wilfred, who introduced me to The Future Group and over the years became my partner in crime and a great friend.  

I am very excited to be part of this group of Oracle Specialist and work closely with the people I have come to appreciate and respect within the community. 

Microsites: Add a Map Component and Publish your Microsite

When continuing to adding components to the website, I added a Map component. Open your component palette in the Sites Cloud and drag and drop the map component to your site.

To make sure the maps shows the right place, we need to add the location. The easiest way to do this is to go to google maps, click on the location you want to display in your map and copy that location.

Once copied, you can enter this in the Map settings, adjust the zoom as you wish and select the other options. For example, I want to show a Display Marker, so I tick that checkbox.

Save your modifications, this will bring you back to the Sites Overview page. Now you can select to change the status of the site from Offline to Online. If you do this, you will get a warning poup that the site will be publicly available.

After this, you should see the site status being changed to Online and the url of your website is visible.

If you click the URL, it will bring you to the website.

Nothing too fancy yet, but you can see how you can work with different components to build your website based on the Documents you have added.

Microsites: Interact with DCS using the ipad app

You can use the Oracle Documents ipad app to interact with the Documents Cloud Service. Go to the app store and search for ‘Oracle Documents’, you will find the Oracle Douments application, get and install the app to your ipad.

The app would like to send you notifications, after that you will also have to accept the License Agreement.

When the app starts up, you will get a quick tutorial to tell you the basics or you can skip this.

In the sign in screen, you have to enter your e-mail address and password again. You will also need the Server URL, just like you did when installing the synchronization client.

After signing in, you are in the app and you can browse your documents.

By default the app does not have the security code on. It is wise to put this on, for this go to the settings page.

Click on the passcode lock and enter a passcode and select to unlock through TouchID if your device supports this.

That is all it takes to set up the app. You can now start using the Documents Cloud from your ipad.

Microsites: Start building your site in the Cloud!

So after requesting the services, and installing the synchronization client, you can start building your site. When setting up the synchronization client I added some documents about my house, pictures, descriptions, maps, stuff like that.

Now with the help of Sites I will use the files that are synchronized to the Documents Cloud to start building a webpage about my house. After you login to your Cloud Services, go to the Service Console.

 Use the left side menu to switch to the Sites part of the console.

Follow the wizards that will help you set up your site. We start with creating a new site.

We do not have any themes yet, so we create a new theme as well.

I selected the Basic theme to start with.

Give your site a name and optional description.

Select edit, you will get a pop up to give your update a name and after that you will be brought to the edit modus of your

Use the Toggle in the upper right corner to switch from Preview to Edit modus, so you can start dragging and dropping components.

 I choose to delete the whole site tree, because I want to start with just one page on my website.

In the left hand menu, select the second tab to start adding components. I drag and dropped a gallery grid on the page.

Go to the settings of the gallery.

Click the images button to add your images to the gallery.

Now the file picker will open and you can select files that you have previously synchronized to your Documents Cloud folder.

After adding the images, I also drag and dropped a document as a component on the page.

Once again, use the file picker to select a document to display under the pictures.

You will now see the images on top of the site, with the document shown below.

This website is not very fancy, but it gives you an idea of how you can start building your website using the component palette and the integration between Documents & Sites Cloud.