In ADF Faces, you use the af:document tag's initialFocusId to define the initial component focus. For this, specify the id property value of the component that you want to put the initial focus on. Identifiers are relative to the component, and must account for NamingContainers. You can use a single colon to start the search from the root, or multiple colons to move up through the NamingContainers - "::" will pop out of the component's naming container and begin the search from there, ":::" will pop out of two naming containers and begin the search from there. Alternatively you can add the naming container IDs as a prefix to the component Id, e.g. nc1:nc2:comp1.

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/apirefs.1111/e12419/tagdoc/af_document.html

To set the initial focus to a component located in a page fragment that is exposed through an ADF region, keep in mind that ADF Faces regions - af:region - is a naming container too. To address an input text field with the id "it1" in an ADF region exposed by an af:region tag with the id r1, you use the following reference in af:document:

<af:document id="d1" initialFocusId="r1:0:it1">

Note the "0" index in the client Id. Also, make sure the input text component has its clientComponent property set to true as otherwise no client component exist to put focus on.