Oracle User Productivity Kit

If you've been waiting for folder security in the UPK Library, I know exactly what some of you are thinking, "It's time to lock down the System folder once and for all!" But wait--there are some important things to consider.

Many of the documents in the System folder are used by other features in the Developer. To help you decide how you would like to lock down the System folder without causing any problems for your authors, we've described some of the permissions required by various folders in the System folder below:

Templates (Suggested permission: READ)
If authors do not have permission to READ the Templates folder, they will not be able to open topics in the Topic Editor, because the author will be unable to read the text generated using the templates. It is possible to set permission on the language folders beneath the Templates folder individually. For example, giving an author LIST permission to the Templates/en ("en" for English), would prevent this author from opening topics using the English template, but if the same author had READ permission to Templates/de ("de" for German), they could still open topics which use the German template.

Publishing/Styles (Suggested permission: READ)
If authors do not have permission to READ the Publishing Styles folder, they will not be able to publish or preview content.

Publishing/Help Menu Integration (Suggested permission: READ)
When an author publishes a Player, these files will be needed to integrate the Player into the help menu of various applications.

Icons/Custom (Suggested permission: MODIFY)
If authors are allowed to add icons for frame links, they will need the ability to MODIFY this folder. If authors do not need this capability, READ permissions should suffice.

Icons/Standard (Suggested permission: READ)
Authors will need READ to this folder to open topics in the Topic Editor, even if there are no attachments using these icons.

Roles (Suggested permission: READ)
Authors who need to add roles to modules, sections, or topics will need READ permissions to this folder. Authors who need to add roles to the Master Role List, will need MODIFY permission to this folder.

In summary, most, if not all, authors should have READ permission to the entire System folder, with a few exceptions. You'll notice that there are no default cases where LIST permission is recommended, which illustrates that LIST should be used with careful consideration.

Please share your thoughts on Library permissions in the comments.

Having used UPK for so long, I often take for granted some of the habits (both good and bad) I've picked up over the years. I recently remembered a few shortcuts that I wanted to share with other UPK authors who work in the Topic Editor, which I've documented here.

Move Around Faster

• Alt + Left Arrow (<--) = Navigates to the previous frame
  
• Alt + Right Arrow (-->) = navigates to the next frame
  
• Alt + Home = navigates to the Introduction frame
  
• Alt + End = navigates to the End frame

Get a Better View of your Screenshots

• Right click drag the screenshot to pan the screenshot.
  
• You can show and hide all property windows using the icon which looks like an empty window. This option can also be found in the View menu. This allows you to see more of the captured screenshot, which is very useful when editing content developed in a screen size equal to or larger than the screen size used for editing.

More Control of Action Areas

• Left double-click the screenshot to define the upper-left corner of the action area
  
• Shift + Left double-click the screenshot to define the lower-right corner of the action area
  
• Control + Left click drag to draw the action area

Tame Bubble Snapping

• When moving a bubble, you can hold down the Control key to avoid "snapping" to the action area in predefined location, allowing you to determine where the bubble connects to the action area.

Other Cool Stuff

• Right double-click the screenshot to bring up a context menu with the options to: Create Action Area or Edit Screenshot

I plan to update this post with a video in the future. There are others which we may cover in future posts. I hope this allows you to further reduce the time you spend editing content. And, if you know of any Topic Editor tips you'd like to share, let us know in the comments.

If you're reading this, I'm sure you know that Oracle UPK allows you to leverage existing content (created in other applications) by attaching the content to the concept pane, bubble hyperlinks, web page hyperlinks, etc. One file type which is often attached to UPK content is Microsoft PowerPoint. Since the UPK Player is launched in a web browser, these PowerPoint attachments are also being launched through the web browser, which can lead to a different user experiences based on the way the user's browser is configured.

Launching Microsoft PowerPoint files in a web browser has inspired a lot of discussions on the internet. These discussions are valuable to those of you who have decided to include Microsoft PowetPoint files in UPK content, so I'd like to share with you a web page which offers a lot of information about this topic:

http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00189.htm -- this web page has a good overview of the various challenges with deploying PowerPoint files through the web browser and the options available to address these challenges.

If you cannot find a viable solution for delivering Microsoft PowerPoint files as UPK attachments, you can always save your presentations as Portable Document Format (PDF) files. While PDF files can also behave differently depending on the user's software and configuration, there seem to be less variables to worry about.

What types of content do you attach in UPK? What challenges have you encountered and how have you resolved them? Let us know in the comments.