Oracle User Productivity Kit

From time to time, I hear questions about the installation process for UPK. For example: "What's the difference between a client install and a single-user install?" "Is IIS required?" "Does UPK use an Oracle database?"

To try and help you out, here's a few tips to remember.

UPK can be installed as a single-user,stand alone developer on your machine. The Developer will have all the capability to create, store and publish your content from that single location without the need to connect to an enterprise database. However, it can also be installed for a multi-developer environment. This requires a back-end database to store the content data.

Beginning with UPK 3.1.6, the Oracle Database is supported for UPK content development.

Microsoft's web server, IIS, is also required as part of the development server...but NOT for the deployment of the browser based player package. So you don't have IIS available for a multi-user development environment? Well..here's what you can do....

A key benefit to having the multi-developer environment is the ability to view content being developed by others. Content can also be shared by using the import/export feature from within the Developer. From the menu bar, click Tools>Export to create an archive file (.odarc) of the selected topic(s). This file can be emailed or placed on a central server to be imported (Tools>Import) into a different developer's machine.

Remember that a published player package can run on ANY web server that accepts the http protocol.

Oracle User Productivity Kit 3.5 (UPK 3.5) is now available on E-Delivery! This release includes a lot of great features that make using UPK even easier than before. Here is a very quick list of some of the new features included in this release:

Copy and Paste Frames
Copy one or more frames to a new location in the same topic, or to a completely different topic altogether. This provides an excellent way to reuse content or recompose existing topics.

Customizable Document Outputs
Word bookmarks allow you to customize existing document publishing styles in a very WYSIWYG environment.

Library Security
Control which users or usergroups can open or modify content in the UPK Library. This allows much more flexibility in managing one or more authoring groups with different responsibilities in a single Library.

Customizable Library Views
Do you need to find out which documents are checked out to you? Perhaps you'd like to see a list of all Modules in the Final state? The new customizable views feature will make this information one click away.

Automatically Record Screenshots
Enable novice authors or Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to be productive more quickly by eliminating the need to press any additional keys during recording.

Re-recorder Enhancements
The Re-recorder now has the ability to move forward and backward through the topic allowing authors to more easily re-record only the steps that need to be re-recorded.

Compressed Sound and Improved Sound Import
Import compressed sound directly into the Topic Editor one frame at a time or for an entire outline using the improved sound import feature.

Player Table of Contents Redesigned
Redesigned the Player Table of Contents to be more usable and efficient.

Print It! mode
The new Player mode Print It! allows authors to include either a Job Aid or System Process document with any topic.

Add Keywords, Roles, and Context to Modules and Sections
Modules and sections with attached content can have keywords, roles, and context information. Keywords will be available to the Player search, roles will allow the modules and section to appear in a role-filtered Player, and context allows modules and sections to be included in Applicable launches of the Player.

More detailed information can be found in the Upgrade.pdf document found within the installation media, or on the UPK web site. Enjoy!

Have you used the new views introduced in UPK 3.5? Have you edited any of the existing views? Or have you created your own unique views? Here's a very short video describing one example of why you might want to create a new view.

UPK 3.5 Feature Overview: Views.

Do you have other ideas for views? Let us know in the comments.

UPK 3.1 introduced a new feature named Print Outline. This feature allowed authors to export the current view of the active outline to a number of formats: pdf, html, Excel, and various image types. Print Outline was great for sharing information about the content in UPK with users who did not normally use UPK--executive sponsors, for example. However, since this feature was only available in the Outline Editor, this meant the desired data needed to be in an outline (module or section) before it could be exported using Print Outline. If the author wanted to export data from multiple outlines, they would need to create a new outline which contained all the documents they wanted to export.

The more versatile Print feature, introduced in UPK 3.5, can be used in the Outline Editor and the Library. This is an important improvement considering the additional control of Views also introduced in UPK 3.5. Below is an example of how this feature can be used to create reports for UPK:

UPK 3.5 Feature Overview: Print.