OA Framework was designed with durable personalization capabilities. Durability of OA Framework personalization is largely attributed to the declarative architecture and the object-oriented approach underlying the implementation. Declarative UI component definitions are stored in the form of meta-data in a database repository. Personalizations are translated into offsets from the base meta-data definition and stored separately. At runtime, the applicable personalizations meta-data is uploaded from the repository and layered over the base meta-data definition to produce the net effect. Product upgrades and patches affect only the base meta-data definition, so customer personalizations continue to function properly as applicable.
The built-in personalization UI facilitates a variety of personalization features at a number of different levels within the following user groups:
Seeded Function Level - like the Function Level available to Administrators (see the following section), but personalizations made at this level can only be changed or deleted by Oracle.
Seeded User Level - like the User Level available to End Users (see the following section), but personalizations made at this level can only be changed or deleted by Oracle. (Also referred to as "Oracle-seeded user-level" personalizations.)
Other seeded levels - Oracle E-Business Suite Developers can create and ship personalizations at any of the Administrator personalization levels discussed in the following section, but these are not protected against change and deletion by Administrators at the customer site.
For additional information, refer to Chapter 4: Implementing Specific UI Features: Personalizable Pages in the OA Framework Developer's Guide.
Function Level - the customer administrator can define functions and use them as context for granular level personalizations. For example, you can create a function-level personalization to "hide the salary field, if the user is updating an employee record, but not when the user is creating a new employee".
Industry Level - the customer administrator can use the delivered set of predefined industry categories to define personalizations according to vertical market distinctions.
Seeded personalizations may be provided at this level, but customer administrators can also create their own admin-level Industry personalizations.
Localization Level - the customer administrator can use locales as context for personalizations such as "showing a different address field label based on country settings".
Site Level - the customer administrator can introduce global personalizations that affect all users with access to the given application component, such as "setting the number of rows shown in a table".
Organization Level - the customer administrator can introduce personalizations that affect all users belonging to a particular organization or business unit with access to the application component. Example: "sort notifications by age for one organization and by urgency for another".
Responsibility Level - the customer administrator can introduce personalizations that affect all users of a particular responsibility with access to the application component. Example: "show a trend graph for the sales manager responsibility".
Seeded User Level - like the User Level available to End Users (see below), but personalizations made at this level are visible to all users and can only be changed or deleted by the customer administrator. (Also referred to as "admin-seeded user-level" personalizations.)
Refer to Personalizing Your Pages and Portlets for additional information.
Application Users can resize or reorder columns of tables as well as save personalized searches of a query results region and retrieve them at a later time. User level personalizations aren't seen by other users.
Refer to Personalizing Your Pages and Portlets for additional information.
The following administrator and end user personalizations are available:
Change number of rows displayed in a table.
Change product branding (image).
Change region header icon.
Hide or show regions and items.
Change layout order of regions and items within the boundaries of the parent region.
Include or exclude descriptive flexfield segments.
Define up to three sorting levels for tabulated data.
Filter (restrict querying of) tabular data.
Change item labels and region headers.
Change required state of non-mandatory items.
Update allowed state for updateable items.
Enable totals for table columns, when applicable.
Alter the item cascading style sheet (CSS) - to personalize the look and feel of an item.
Set a default value for an item.
Define tips (in line instructions and usage help) for associated items.
Add new items to an existing region. Typically, as part of an extensibility project, where new items are limited to specific styles.
All administrator personalizations are visible to the end user.
System Personalizations - in addition to the above, the following are some cross application personalizations facilitated by both OA Framework and Application Object Library:
Branding
Style sheets
Images
Responsibilities
Menus
Messages
Lookup Codes
Pre-packaged Flexfields
Customizing Look and Feel
Unlike Administrators, Users can create and save several personalized searches that can be retrieved conveniently at a later time. That said, end-user personalized saved searches are limited in scope to Query regions with search results tables. For these regions, end-users can personalize any of the following features:
Change the number of rows displayed in a table.
Hide or show regions and items (results table columns are a popular example).
Change the layout order of regions and items within the boundaries of the parent region (order of results table columns are a popular example).
Define up to three sorting levels for tabulated data.
Filter (restrict query) tabular data.
Change item labels and region headers.
Enable totals for table columns, when applicable.
Reorder and/or resize table columns.