WHEN should you upgrade your current Oracle WebCenter Sites 11g?

Oracle’s premier support for Oracle WebCenter Sites (OWCS) 11g (11.1.1.x) ends in December 2018. Now is the time to look for options to upgrade from Oracle 11g to 12c (12.2.1.x.0). Oracle has released 3 versions, the latest stable version being 12.2.1.3.0.

HOW can you upgrade to OWCS 12c?

Oracle offers the “Upgrade Assistant” tool for all of its Fusion Middleware products, including OWCS 12c. The Upgrade Assistant automates many upgrade tasks, including upgrading component schemas, configurations (WebLogic, etc.) and other standalone system configurations in the Oracle 11g to 12c upgrade. The Upgrade Assistant tool also offers certain validation scripts to verify post upgrade.

Here’s the best part—you don’t have to upgrade alone! Let InspiredECM upgrade your system and get you and up and running with the latest OWCS 12c today.

What is NEW with the OWCS 12c upgrade?

OWCS 12c offers a wide range of new features that enable your organization to deliver an enhanced digital experience. Here are highlights of some of the new features we know you’ll be excited about:

1. Right to Left Approach

• OWCS will now support languages with RTL approach (such as Arabic), so it’s easy for Arabic users to create Arabic content. This is a long-awaited feature for organizations that conduct business internationally.

2. Accessibility

• WebCenter Sites now supports configurable accessibility features including screen reader support, customizable keyboard shortcuts, seamless keyboard-based navigation, and high-contrast mode for Contributor interface, based on Oracle Accessibility Guidelines 2.0.

3. Contributor Publishing

• Content Authors can now approve and publish content to Delivery themselves, without having to wait for Administrators to trigger the Publishing queue. This feature is provisioned to be configured as needed.

4. My Tags

• Users will no longer have to search with their tag name from the huge list of Assets, in order to be able to drop assets.

5. A/B Testing

• Now OWCS users can visually author an A/B test from any page and use either content or presentation or a combination of both as variants.

6. Insights

• New important services have been integrated into OWCS 12c, including Insights, a closed loop analytics and reporting tool.

7. Conversions

• Oracle WebCenter Sites 12c now supports conversions and events for better visitor behavior tracking and analysis. A conversion is an expected visitor action, such as a click-through or viewing a minimum length of a video. WebCenter Sites pages and A/B tests use these conversions to track and qualify the visitor actions on the website.

8. Visitor Services

• Visitor Services enables applications to identify the visitor aggregate profile from different repositories, link and unlink profiles, and access them securely through Java and REST APIs using an aggregation template.

9. MVC Framework

• The major complaint on OWCS is addressed! OWCS now uses MVC pattern framework for implementation of content delivery portion. The development is majorly server-based with business logic (Groovy based WCS_Controller) and View (JSP based Template) separated. It also provides an easy to create custom REST Services.

10. Enhanced Security

• OWCS 12c supports Oracle Platform Security Services (OPSS) credential store. Communication with the credential store is encrypted (HTTPS) and each individual WebCenter Sites instance is uniquely authenticated.

11. Properties Management

• All the different .ini files have been consolidated into a single config file in 12c (wcs_properties.json). You also now have a special tool within the Admin tab to interact with these properties, removing the usage of the age-old Java based ‘Property Editor’ tool.

12. Enterprise Manager

• Like any other product in the Fusion family, OWCS 12c is also shipped with Enterprise Manager, which is highly useful to monitor system health, view logs and performance, and interact with servers.

13. Updated Administration Tab

• The pain of waiting for the Administration tab to load is addressed. OWCS 12c now implements a usable tab by replacing the old Java applet view.

14. Shared File System

• OWCS 12c now supports storing shared file systems in a database. Administrators can also choose the OWCS repository database or choose a separate database.

15. Content Audit

• System administrators can now get an overall picture of the OWCS system for Author productivity, top internal searches, and publishing details at any given time. This is very useful for compliance and audit purposes.

16. Help

• Users such as Content Authors and Content Admins no longer have to wait for the OWCS SME to clarify problems. OWCS 12c now offers a “Help” link at almost all authoring places that will take you to the appropriate self-learning documentation.

Start enjoying all the amazing new features and benefits of Oracle WebCenter Sites 12c today! Contact Inspired ECM and let us be your partner for a successful, seamless upgrade.