In this presentation you will get a feature overview of the forums in SAP NetWeaver Portal 7.3.

Transcription

1 In this presentation you will get a feature overview of the forums in SAP NetWeaver Portal

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9 There are many advantages to decide for the forum application.

10 Here you see the Portal integration features of the forums.

11 Forums are not a new development. SAP integrated a product from a third party vendor into SAP NW Portal. The advantage of our forum solution is this integration into the Portal, we have an integration into SAP NW SSO, User Management, Portal Navigation and into the Portal Search.

12 . Forums run in the Portal navigation. There are two roles which are delivered out-ofthe-box: the forum user and the forum admin role.

13 notification: user can subsribe to a wiki page and get informed in case of a content change. Blacklists: removes profanity/insulting words/phrases automatially from a wiki page and replaces them for example by asteriks. Forums encourage the participation of many users: the boundary to use forums is very low. Advanced page creation for the power user by the use of macros The possility to self-publising by contributors Open and simple editing User banning by the administrator Moderation support: forum messages are approved before they are published. Access control by a sophisticated permission concept

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15 Forum iviews and roles are delivered out of the box. After deployment you can find them in the Portal Content Studio in a special folder. All you have to do is to assign your users and user groups to these two roles.

16 The Admin Console is the primary control panel where the administrator can configure and manage forums. Very important steps: the administrator must create the forums hierarchy and define the permissions for other administrators, moderators and users.

17 It is very fast and easy to get your users into working mode.

18 The first basic task is the creation of the forum hierarchy. It is defined by the administrator in the administration console. Forums are always built up in a hierarchy. The hierarchy represents mostly areas of interest about which the forum users are going to discuss. From the largest component to smallest, the hierarchy can be defined like this: We have a Root Category which is in the system per default. The administator can create one or several sub-categories under the Root Category, in our exemple we have hardware and software. When defining subcategories, one should be careful that the structure is intuitive for the forum users. In the user view the user sees the forum hierarchy and clicks through the categories and sub-categories. So the structure should be intuitive and understandable for the users. Forums are defined under the categories and sub categories and are always on the lowest level of the hierarchy. Under Software you have the forums: Operating System, Office and Business Software and Privacy and Security.

19 You should keep in mind: we have categories, subcategories (optional) and also forums -> created by the admin. And we have threads and messages created by users.

20 Another basic task is the permission handling. You can have one or several system admins: a system admin has the global permission to do every admin task on the wiki admin environment. In addition you can also define category admins admins who have special permissions only within certain categories. In addition you can also define a forum administrator someone with special permissions only for certain forums. The permission concept is very flexible. You can have a very granular permission concept or you keep it very simple.

21 The user permissions can also be assigned on a very granular basis. You can decide exaxtly what the users can do in a given category: read forums, create threads, create attachments and announcements.

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25 Here you see the forums end user view. Usually the user sees a forums hierarchy like this: we have some categories like Software and a list of forums belonging to this category. The user can enter one or all forums to create threads or reply to messages.

26 When a user clicks into a forum, he/she sees a list of existing threads. A thread is a question posed in a forum. A thread consists of the initial question and all the messages that respond to that question.

27 Here you see a thread with a message list: A message is a single question, discussion point, or reply that is published in a thread. Messages have a header, text, and sometimes attachments. Messages or replies can also be rated.

28 When a thread is finished, it can be posted. In the thread list it is then the first entry.

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32 As a forum user, you can take part in polls. Each forum user can only vote once in each poll. Usually, the administrator or moderator has permissions to create polls and forum users can only participate in them. However, it is possible to give individual forum users special permissions. If you have the permission, you can create a poll in a category or forum and then ask other forum users to vote in your poll and perform a rating.

33 Forums can be integrated into the Portal Search.

34 This is also a nice feature: watch forums. You can watch a category, forum, or thread. If you do so, you receive a notification in your inbox as soon as a user adds a new thread or message or changes an existing thread or message. You can also use the Watch function to create a message in a forum. If you receive a notification and reply to the in your system, your is automatically posted as a reply in the forum.

35 Rating is a new feature in SAP NetWeaver

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37 You can configure the forum application with or without moderation (content control). Without moderation configuration every user can create and publish forum threads and messages right away. When you define a moderator and activate moderation, this moderator will approve all threads created in a forum before they can be published and made visible to other people.

38 Moderators can also see small parts of the admin console. In the moderation summary they can check and approve new threads and posts before they are placed into a forum and displayed to forum participants.

39 Moderators have much more functions in a forum as an end user. Moderators can edit, lock, delete and move threads. When a moderator locks a thread, it is closed: no more posts can be added to the thread. One can close a thread if one thinks that a thread has been thoroughly discussed or if one thinks a discussion is escalating. Concerning replies: moderators can edit or delete replies.

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