Oracle is progressively moving their products to a new exciting user experience called Oracle Alta.This new interface style optimizes the user interface for both desktop and mobile platforms with a unified user experience. The features of the new interface are too numerous to mention but here is a summary of the Oracle Alta implementation in Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.3.0.0.1 and above:
- The user interface is clearer and with a more modern look and feel. An example is shown below:
- The implementation of Oracle Alta for Oracle Utilities uses the Oracle Jet version of the Alta interface which was integrated into the Oracle Utilities Application Framework rendering engine.
- For easier adoption, the existing product screens have been converted to Alta with as small amount of changes as possible. This means training for adoption is minimized and helps existing customers adopt the new user interface quicker. Over subsequent releases new user experiences will be added to existing screens or new screens to take full advantage of the user experience.
- There are a few structural changes on the screens to improve the user experience as part of the Alta adoption:
- The fly-out menu on left in past releases has been replaced with a new menu toolbar. The buttons that appear on the toolbar will depend on the services that user is connected to on their security definition. An example of the toolbar is shown below:
- User preferences and common user functions are now on a menu attached to the user. For example:
- Portals and Zones now have page actions attached in the top right of their user interfaces (the example at the top of this article illustrates an example of this behavior). The buttons displayed are dynamic will vary from zone to zone, portal to portal and user to user depending on the available functions and the users security authorizations.
- In query portals, searches can now be saved as named. In past releases, it was possible to only change the default view for an alternative. It is now possible to alter the criteria, column sequencing, column sorting and column view for a query view and save that as a named search to jump to. It is possible to have multiple different views of the same query zone available from a context menu. The end user can build new views, alter existing views or remove views as necessary. All of this functionality is security controlled to allow sites to define what individual users can and cannot do. Also, views can be inherited from template users in line with bookmarks, favorites etc. An example of the saved view context menu is shown below:
- Menu's have changed. In the past the menu item supported the Search action (the default action) or "+" to add a new record. In Alta, these are now separate submenu's. For example:
- Page titles have been moved to the top of zones to improve usability. The example at the top of this article illustrates this point. The User page title used to be above zone in the middle, now it is up the top left of the portal or zone.
- Bookmarking has been introduced. This is akin to browser bookmarking where the page and the context for that page are stored with the bookmark for quick traversal. The Bookmark button will appear on pages that can be bookmarked.
- The new user interface allows Oracle Utilities products to support a wide range of browsers and client platforms including mobile platforms. Refer to the Installation Guides for each product to find the browsers and client platforms supported at the time of release.
This article is just a summary of the user interface changes. There will other articles in the future to cover user interface aspects, and other enhancements, in more detail.