In 2018, Oracle had come up with another content management and delivery system, when its on-premise CMS model, Oracle WebCenter Sites (OWCS) was already doing well in the market. However, the difference is that this new CMS offering is a cloud-based platform, known as Oracle Content and Experience (OCE).
This Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering from Oracle, took several incarnations since its inception w.r.t its marketing name. It was first launched as Oracle Documents Cloud, then renamed to Oracle Sites Cloud and later Oracle Content and Experience Cloud (CEC). It is currently being referred to as Oracle Content and Experience (OCE) by Oracle, in its product documentation and marketing resources. So, do not get confused with these names when you see them on the internet. They are all referring to the same product!
According to Oracle’s official statement, “Oracle Content and Experience is a cloud-based content hub to drive omnichannel content management and accelerate experience delivery. It offers powerful collaboration and workflow management capabilities to streamline the creation and delivery of content and improve customer and employee engagement.”
OCE as a product helps customers not just to manage websites, but also serve as a single source of truth repository for digital assets, and documents, which are either produced by other applications and pushed to OCE for storage, or produced in OCE and pulled by other applications. Hence, OCE strategically stands as a central platform to contribute, collaborate, and share content across applications built using the Oracle cloud ecosystem.
Here, we are listing down some of the major features of OCE and their overview, for customers looking to understand this Product’s capabilities in a nutshell.
• Building Websites: The building blocks of an OCE-based website include Sites, Themes, Components, and Templates. OCE offers a list of industry-standard Themes, Templates and Components to readily kickstart building enterprise-level engaging websites without having to onboard a developer. That said, businesses can still create their own brand experiences by building their customized components and look & feel. Developers will need to use the KnockoutJS framework to build them, that are drag-droppable on Pages. When page building is ready, users can preview and publish the Site with one button click to make it available for the public.
• Hello Sign Integration: HelloSign allows businesses to electronically request and add legally binding signatures to any document. OCE provides OOTB integration support with HelloSign that helps customers to eliminate costly and redundant paperwork tasks. To use HelloSign, just type in the names and email addresses of the signers in the HelloSign iframe in OCE and it will trigger emails to assignees who will be able to sign the document in a few clicks. When your document is signed, click “Get Signed File” in the menu to retrieve the signed document.
• Desktop Application: OCE provides a client-based application that can be installed both on Windows and Mac, to access OCE instances and upload, organize and retrieve assets from one or more OCE instances and accounts. This feature helps users to work offline and deal with a large volume and size of assets at a time. The seamless synchronization capability keeps your Web interface, Desktop app, and Mobile Apps up to date.
• Microsoft Office Integration: OCE provides a default MS Office plugin along with Desktop App installation, using which users can work with synched files directly from the Office document. If MS Office Online Integration is enabled on the user’s desktop, he can also work in Office document directly from the Web client.
• Mobile Applications: OCE offers Mobile Apps both on Google Play and Apple App Store to download and connect to multiple OCE instances with the same credentials as web UI. These Apps are very productive for users to perform all basic operations on documents and assets and participate in the Workflow processes to review and approve contents on the go, without having to connect to OCE from a Desktop device.
• Collaboration: Links to Files and Folders in OCE can be made available to users and groups by sharing them with both Organizational and external users. The privileges of the recipient depend on the role set for them i.e. Viewer, Downloader, Contributor, and Manager.
• Rest APIs & SDK: OCE provides REST APIs for content delivery and for management of content, conversations, documents, and users and groups, which lets you access Oracle Content and Experience Cloud functionality to create your own integrations within the service or across services. Similarly, the OCE’s Software Development Kit (SDK) includes JavaScript calls that let applications interact with the underlying site architecture. API documentation is open and available at https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/paas/content-cloud/developer/oracle-content-and-experience-cloud-rest-apis.html
