Using Web Folders to add content to a page: an example

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Web Folders is a Microsoft OS extension that supports the WebDAV protocol. If you access Web Folders on your computer, you can browse the contents of the page groups in your portal through Windows Explorer and drag and drop files into the pages in those page groups.

In this example, a user called Scott uses Web Folders to browse the contents of a page group called My Portal and add a file to a page in that page group. The example uses Web Folders in Windows 2000.

To use Web Folders to add content to a page (Windows 2000):

1. First, Scott opens Windows Explorer and clicks My Network Places.

   

2. Next he double-clicks Add Network Place to display the Add Network Place Wizard.

3. He enters the URL for his portal:

   http://mymachine.mycompany:5000/dav_portal/portal

   

   Tip: If he wanted to display and access a particular page group page, Scott would add its (internal) name to the URL. For example, to directly access mypage in the myportal page group he would enter:

   http://mymachine.mycompany.com:5000/dav_portal/portal/myportal/mypage

4. After clicking the Next button, Scott is prompted for his user name and password. He enters the user name and password that he usually uses to log in to the portal.

   

   Tips:

   • If you are prompted to log in more than once, select the Save this password in your password list check box to avoid having to re-enter your password each time. Also, you can ask your portal administrator to make sure that the DAV cookie option is enabled (see Accessing Oracle9iAS Portal from WebDAV clients for more information about this cookie).

   • If your portal is in a hosted environment, include your company name in your user name, for example scott@mycompany.

   • You can log in to Web Folders as one user at any given time. That is, multiple simultaneous log ins are not allowed. If you want to log in to Web Folders as a new user, clear your cookies, restart your computer to clear out the current login session, then log in as the new user.

   The portal is now listed as one of Scott's network places.

   

5. Scott double-clicks the portal entry in My Network Places to drill down into it.

   You can now see a folder for each of the page groups in the portal. The folders actually represent the root pages of the page groups.

   

   Note: All page groups, pages, and items display their internal names in Web Folders not their display names. In our example you can see that the name of your page group is MYPORTAL (its internal name), rather than My Portal (its display name).

6. Then, he double-clicks MYPORTAL to drill down into the My Portal page group.

   You can now see a folder for each of the pages in the My Portal page group.

   

7. Next, he clicks mypage to drill down further.

   Within the mypage folder you can see the files associated with items in the page. Our example page, mypage, contains a file item that displays a text file (MYDOCUMENT.TXT), so you can see MYDOCUMENT.TXT in the mypage folder.

   

   Note: If the page had sub-pages, these would be listed as sub-folders.

8. Because you can access your portal's Web Folder just like any other folder in Windows Explorer, you can drag and drop files from any other folder into your portal. In our example, Scott can drag a document from his local drive into mypage.

   

9. Now, when Scott accesses the page in the portal, it includes the new file.

   

   Notice that the display name of the new item is the same as file name with the extension removed. Scott could edit the item later to change this.

   Note: The item is created as one of the default WebDAV item types (depending on whether the file is a zip file, an image file, or a regular file), and is added to the default item region.

   Tips:

   • We recommend using Internet Explorer 5.5 as your browser if you are using Web Folders to work with your portal.

   • If you are unable to see the new file, clear the cache for the page.

   Note: You can use the drag and drop features to move or copy files within the same page group. Copying files across Portal page groups is not supported. If you wish to perform this action, copy the file to your file system, then copy it from your file system to the target page group.

10. If you have a WebDAV enabled desktop application, such as Microsoft Office 2000, you can open the file directly from your Web Folder, edit the file, and save it again. Any changes that you make will be immediately visible in your portal. For more information, see Using Microsoft Office 2000 to edit the content of a page: an example.

11. You can create new pages in the portal by creating new folders in Web Folders.

    Scott right-clicks inside the mypage folder and chooses New>Folder from the resulting menu.

    

12. Now when he accesses the page in his portal, it includes the new page.

    

    Tips:

    • If you change the name of the folder in Web Folders, you are changing the internal name of the page, not the display name. To change the display name you must use the Portal browser interface.

    • Page names can contain any alphanumeric character, spaces, and the following special characters: _ - . ( ) ! , ; = ~ @.

Notes

• This example shows you how to use Web Folders in Windows 2000 where Web Folders is built into the operating system as part of My Network Places. To use Web Folders in Windows 9x/NT, you must install Internet Explorer 5.5 (not 6.0). You should then be able to access the Add Network Place Wizard by double-clicking My Computer then double-clicking Add Web Folder.

  If you have Internet Explorer 5.5 installed, but cannot find a Web Folders node under My Computer, you need to explicitly install the Web Folders component of Internet Explorer through Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel.

• In Windows 9x/NT, if you have Internet Explorer 6.0 installed, you will not have Web Folders. You must install Internet Explorer 5.5 and the Web Folders component. After you have done this, you can upgrade to Internet Explorer 6.0 without losing support for Web Folders.

Related topics

Accessing Oracle9iAS Portal from WebDAV clients
Using Dreamweaver to edit the content of a page: an example

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