WebCenter Portal - Services Catalog: How to use the Announcements Task flow

This post describes how to use the Announcements taskflow from the WebCenter Portal Services Catalog within JDeveloper.

NOTE: This post has been carried out on WebCenter Portal 11.1.1.8, so instructions and screenshots may differ with your version.

Ensure you have the relevant WebCenter extensions downloaded.

1. Create a new ADF application - Fusion Web Application (ADF) and create a Test.jspx page. This application will be deployed to your WebCenter Portal server, so ensure it works before adding WebCenter taskflow components.

2. From the Resource Palette, find the Announcements task flow under WebCenter Portal - Services Catalog:


3. Drag the task flow onto the jspx page:


4. We need to enter a parent id for the announcements task flow. The id is the forum id of an announcements portal from within WebCenter Portal. We will obtain the Announcements ID in step 5, but the ID will be entered within the Parameters of the Announcements task flow from the bindings layer:


5. We need to get the ID of the Announcements section we want to show. Login to the WebCenter portal application with weblogic e.g. http://localhost:8888/webcenter.

Click Administration -> Click Portals -> Click Administer on the Portal you want to show the Announcements for.

Click Tools and Services -> Click Announcements.

The Forum ID for these Announcements is displayed on this page:


6. Take the Forum ID from step 5 and enter in the task flow parameter shown in step 4:


7. Now, we need to create a connection to the Collaboration server from the ADF application. All discussions and Announcements are hosted on the Collaboration server and is most typically installed as part of WebCentert Portal - it will be a new server in your stack: WC_Collaborations with a Port number of 8890.

8. In JDeveloper in your ADF application, under Resource Palette, click New Connection -> Discussion Forum:


9. Set Connection name as: DiscussionForum. For connection settings, enter the following:

URL: http://localhost:8890/owc_discussions
Admin User: weblogic



10. You can click Test Connection to check if server can be reached, however, when I personally did this, it did not connect but worked anyway! Click Next then Finish.

Properties for this connection are saved in the connections.xml file and can be later modified via scripting when deploying through wlst.

11. Deploy the application to the server and navigate to the jspx page the task flow is added to. NOTE: I have no security added to the page the Announcements task flow is added, the page has anonymous role.

12. You should now see all the announcements on the page, the announcements are pulled from the Portal you obtained the Announcements Forum ID from:



NOTE: The Portal that the above Announcements are from, the security is set to Public, which is why they can be seen by the anonymous user. If the portal has security, then you will see the following message where the task flow should be rendered: 'User is not authorized'. However, if you add log in functionality, and the logged in user has the rights to view the Announcements inside the Portal, then he will see them. Also, if the logged in user has admin rights, then he will see additional functionality such as 'Create new announcement'.

We are using the above anonymous functionality to show public announcements on the Login page, and for admins to control Announcements from within the WebCenter Portal application.

This should get you going, there is plenty more functionality to be explored, such as the 'Announcements - Mini View' task flow. Add that to the page and the Announcements are shown as a mini version. The screenshot below shows the Announcements Mini View task flow added below the Announcements task flow. Click on one of the Announcements and a new popup opens displaying full announcement information: