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• UPK Customer Success Story: The City and County of San Francisco

  - by karen.rihs(at)oracle.com

  The value of UPK during an upgrade is a hot topic and was a primary focus during our latest customer roundtable featuring The City and County of San Francisco: Leveraging UPK to Accelerate Your PeopleSoft Upgrade. As the Change Management Analyst for their PeopleSoft 9.0 HCM project (Project eMerge), Jan Crosbie-Taylor provided a unique perspective on how they're utilizing UPK and UPK pre-built content early on to successfully manage change for thousands of city and county employees and retirees as they move to this new release. With the first phase of the project going live next September, it's important to the City and County of San Francisco to 1) ensure that the various constituents are brought along with the project team, and 2) focus on the end user aspects of the implementation, including training. Here are some highlights on how UPK and UPK pre-built content are helping them accomplish this: As a former documentation manager, Jan really appreciates the power of UPK as a single source content creation tool. It saves them time by streamlining the documentation creation process, enabling them to record content once, then repurpose it multiple times. With regard to change management, UPK has enabled them to educate the project team and gain critical buy in and support by familiarizing users with the application early on through User Experience Workshops and by promoting UPK at meetings whenever possible. UPK has helped create awareness for the project, making the project real to users. They are taking advantage of UPK pre-built content to: Educate the project team and subject matter experts on how PeopleSoft 9.0 works as delivered Create a guide/storyboard for their own recording Save time/effort and create consistency by enhancing their recorded content with text and conceptual information from the pre-built content Create PeopleSoft Help for their development databases by publishing and integrating the UPK pre-built content into the application help menu Look ahead to the next release of PeopleTools, comparing the differences to help the team evaluate which version to use with their implemtentation When it comes time for training, they will be utilizing UPK in the classroom, eliminating the time and cost of maintaining training databases. Instructors will be able to carry all training content on a thumb drive, allowing them to easily provide consistent training at their many locations, regardless of the environment. Post go-live, they will deploy the same UPK content to provide just-in-time, in-application support for the entire system via the PeopleSoft Help menu and their PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal. Users will already be comfortable with UPK as a source of help, having been exposed to it during classroom training. They are also using UPK for a non-Oracle application called JobAps, an online job application solution used by many government organizations. Jan found UPK's object recognition to be excellent, yet it's been incredibly easy for her to change text or a field name if needed. Please take time to listen to this recording. The City and County of San Francisco's UPK story is very exciting, and Jan shared so many great examples of how they're taking advantage of UPK and UPK pre-built content early on in their project. We hope others will be able to incorporate these into their projects. Many thanks to Jan for taking the time to share her experiences and creative uses of UPK with us! - Karen Rihs, Oracle UPK Outbound Product Management

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• Upcoming UPK Events

  - by kathryn.lustenberger(at)oracle.com

  February 15th: UPK: Follow Panduit's Lead and Leverage Oracle's User Productivity Kit To Achieve Your Goals - Join us for a live webcast to learn how Oracle's User Productivity Kit can help you meet and exceed your goals. The webcast will feature Jim Boss, from the Panduit Corporation, who will share how Oracle's User Productivity Kit was used with both Oracle and Non-Oracle applications to helped Panduit to meet their goals. Date: February 15th, 2011 at 12:00 PST / 3:00 EST Evite: http://www.oracle.com/us/dm/65630-naod10046029mpp005c010-se-300908.html March 2nd: Synaptis teams with Oracle to deliver a UPK customer success story - Webinar Offering The Value of UPK (Customer Success Story): How to leverage the value of UPK to streamline processes and maximize end user adoption for a global implementation Join us to learn how the power of UPK can be leveraged to train end users globally in a successful and cost effective manner. A valued Oracle UPK customer will share experiences, successes, challenges, and strategies. The webinar will also include a question and answer session to give the attendees an opportunity to interact directly with the Oracle UPK customer, Synaptis, and the Oracle UPK Team. Date: March 2, 2011 Time: 11:00am - 12:00pm EST Register for this webinar March 27 - 30th: The Alliance 2011 conference is an annual event for all higher education, government, and public sector users of Oracle applications. The Alliance conference is organized and managed by the Higher Education User Group (www.heug.org). This is the 14th annual event for the HEUG. This is your opportunity to join with over 3200 other Higher Education, Federal, State and Local Government users to network, learn and share in our amazing combined experiences. The Alliance conference team is hard at work, putting together the best conference ever for 2011 - so don't delay, make your plans now to be part of Alliance 2011! When: Sunday, March 27th, 2011 - Wednesday, March 30, 2011 Where: The Colorado Convention Center (Denver, Colorado) Registration for Alliance 2011 is Now Open! UPK will be represented at this event offering: Pre-Conference Training Learn the Basics of Oracle User Productivity Kit (UPK) Taking Your UPKs to a Whole New Level, Advanced Use of UPK Demo Pod Staff Sessions: Oracle User Productivity Kit: Creating Value throughout the Project Lifecycle Beyond Basic UPK -- User Tracking and SmartHelp Leveraging Oracle and User Productivity Kit (UPK) to Develop a Comprehensive Training Program Oracle User Productivity Kit Strategy and Roadmap -- Key to User Adoption April 10 - 14th: Registration for COLLABORATE 11 has begun - Don't miss the most comprehensive, user-driven conference devoted to Oracle applications and technology. Collaborate with a global network of more than 5,000 peers and experts to share real-world experiences, solve your challenges and gain insights to validate your technology plans. Read below to discover which group to register with for the best value. UPK will be represented at this event offering: Demo Pod Staff Sessions: Oracle User Productivity Kit: Creating Value throughout the Project Lifecycle Centralize all Project Team assets, AND, Deploy Fully Measurable Training with UPK Pro Oracle User Productivity Kit Strategy and Roadmap - Key to User Adoption Registration is Now Open!

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• UPK Professional Customer Success Story: Medtronic

  - by [email protected]

  In case you missed the live event, be sure to listen to last week's UPK Customer iSeminar featuring Medtronic. This was the first iSeminar in our quarterly series to showcase UPK Professional (UPK and Knowledge Pathways). Donna Miller and Staci Gilbert gave viewers an inside look at samples of Medtronic's content as they shared their experiences, methodology and best practices for use of the solution. Here are some highlights of the call: • Medtronic initially purchased UPK Professional to support a multi-year, global SAP rollout for 9,000 end users located in 24 countries. • As time went on, they expanded their use of UPK Professional to include several of their other enterprise applications: PeopleSoft, Siebel CRM, Hyperion Financial Management, a number of SAP bolt-ons, Documentum, TrackWise, and many others. • In combination with their Saba LMS, UPK Professional has allowed Medtronic to create, deploy, track and certify consistent end user training for critical transactions and processes across their organization worldwide - essential for a company in a heavily regulated industry. • For key pieces of content or certain end user populations, some Medtronic business units localize/translate the global UPK content. Staci demonstrated examples of their SAP content which has been translated into Japanese. • In the live SAP environment, end users rely on UPK's context sensitive in-application performance support. Medtronic has found this to be very helpful post go-live, giving just-in-time support so end users are confident in a new system or when performing tasks they don't often touch (at quarter or year end). UPK also serves as Medtronic's internal Google. • Medtronic has realized savings on many fronts: reduction in support calls due to in-application performance support, elimination of their training clients, and speedier training (1.5 days rather than 5-7 days) of temporary workers by moving from ILT to a blended solution that includes UPK simulations for eLearning. Thanks again to Donna and Staci for an exceptional presentation. They offered so many great examples for anyone who's looking for ways to get more out of UPK or interested in learning about UPK Professional: Knowledge Pathways. - Karen Rihs, Oracle UPK Outbound Product Management

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• Oracle UPK Content Development Tool Settings

  - by [email protected]

  Oracle UPK Content Development tool settings: Before developing UPK content, your UPK Developer needs to be configured with certain standard settings to ensure the content will have a uniform look. To set the options: 1. Open the UPK Developer. 2. Click the Tools menu. 3. Click Options. After you configure the UPK Options, you can share these preferences with other content developers by exporting them to an .ops file. This is particularly useful in workgroup environments where multiple authors are working on the same content that requires consistent output regardless of who authored the content. (To learn more about Exporting/Importing Content Defaults refer to the Content Development.pdf guide that is delivered with the UPK Developer.) Here is a list of a few UPK Developer tool settings that Oracle UPK Content Developers use to develop UPK pre-built content: Screen resolution is set to 1024 x 768. See It mode frame delay is set to 5 seconds. Know It Required % is set to 70% and all three levels of remediation are selected. We opt to automatically record keyboard shortcuts. We use the default settings for the Bubble icon and Pointer position. Bubble color is yellow (Red = 255, Green = 255, Blue = 128). Bubble text is Verdana, Regular, 9 pt. ***Intro and end frame settings match the bubble settings Note: The Content Defaults String Input Settings will change based on which application (interface) you are recording against. For example here is a list of settings for different Oracle applications: • Agile - Microsoft Sans Serif, Regular, 8 • EBS - Microsoft Sans Serif, Regular, 10 • Hyperion - Microsoft Sans Serif, Regular, 8 • JDE E1 - Arial, Regular, 10 • PeopleSoft - Arial, Regular, 9 • Siebel - Arial, Regular, 8 Remember, it is recommended that you set the content defaults before you add documents and record content. When the content defaults are changed, existing documents are not affected and continue to use the defaults that were in effect when those documents were created. - Kathryn Lustenberger, Oracle UPK & Tutor Outbound Product Management

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• UPK & Tutor Customer Roundtable Discussions

  - by [email protected]

  UPK & Tutor Developers are a creative bunch and we hear from lots of customers using our tools in a variety of ways that bring value to their organizations. A large retail organization uses UPK to teach cash handling skills at each of their stores, a national packaging company uses it for their phone system training. A university's technical team uses UPK to capture customizations that are being made to their HCM and FIN applications, building a library of topics purely for the technical team around how customizations were done including who requested them and why. When it comes time to upgrade, it's easy for them to determine if a customization needs to be carried forward and if so, they know exactly how it was done previously. Almost every customer has a story, and we've captured some of them via our quarterly UPK & Tutor Customer Roundtable iSeminar series and we continue to add more. Click this link to hear how customers like you are using UPK & Tutor in their organizations. Who knows, you may pick up some new tricks to wow your colleagues and management!

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• Getting More Out of UPK

  - by [email protected]

  Are you getting the most out of UPK? Remember the idea of streamlining your content creation efforts? How about the concept of collaboration during development? How are you leveraging the System Process Documents or Test Scripts? Is your training team benefiting from the creation of process documentation? Is UPK linked into the help menu of your application or your even at the browser level (Smart Help)? Many customers underutilize UPK. Some customers just think of UPK as a training creation solution or just for creating documentation. To get the full value of UPK you need to first evaluate how the UPK developer is installed. Single User or Multi User? If you have more than two developers of UPK, then there is a significant benefit from installing UPK in multi user mode. This helps drive collaboration, automatic version control and better facilitation of the workflow and state features with use of customized views for the developers. Has your organization installed Usage Tracking? How are the outputs deployed and for how many applications? If these questions have you thinking about your overall usage of UPK and you see significant improvement by using more of what UPK has to offer, then it could be time for a UPK Health Check. Contact your UPK Sales Consultant to help understand your environment and how to maximize the value of UPK and start getting more out of the product.

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• Is your team is a high-performing team?

  As a child I can remember looking out of the car window as my father drove along the Interstate in Florida while seeing prisoners wearing bright orange jump suits and prison guards keeping a watchful eye on them. The prisoners were taking part in a prison road gang. These road gangs were formed to help the state maintain the state highway infrastructure. The prisoner’s primary responsibilities are to pick up trash and debris from the roadway. This is a prime example of a work group or working group used by most prison systems in the United States. Work groups or working groups can be defined as a collection of individuals or entities working together to achieve a specific goal or accomplish a specific set of tasks. Typically these groups are only established for a short period of time and are dissolved once the desired outcome has been achieved. More often than not group members usually feel as though they are expendable to the group and some even dread that they are even in the group. "A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they are mutually accountable." (Katzenbach and Smith, 1993) So how do you determine that a team is a high-performing team?  This can be determined by three base line criteria that include: consistently high quality output, the promotion of personal growth and well being of all team members, and most importantly the ability to learn and grow as a unit. Initially, a team can successfully create high-performing output without meeting all three criteria, however this will erode over time because team members will feel detached from the group or that they are not growing then the quality of the output will decline. High performing teams are similar to work groups because they both utilize a collection of individuals or entities to accomplish tasks. What distinguish a high-performing team from a work group are its characteristics. High-performing teams contain five core characteristics. These characteristics are what separate a group from a team. The five characteristics of a high-performing team include: Purpose, Performance Measures, People with Tasks and Relationship Skills, Process, and Preparation and Practice. A high-performing team is much more than a work group, and typically has a life cycle that can vary from team to team. The standard team lifecycle consists of five states and is comparable to a human life cycle. The five states of a high-performing team lifecycle include: Formulating, Storming, Normalizing, Performing, and Adjourning. The Formulating State of a team is first realized when the team members are first defined and roles are assigned to all members. This initial stage is very important because it can set the tone for the team and can ultimately determine its success or failure. In addition, this stage requires the team to have a strong leader because team members are normally unclear about specific roles, specific obstacles and goals that my lay ahead of them.  Finally, this stage is where most team members initially meet one another prior to working as a team unless the team members already know each other. The Storming State normally arrives directly after the formulation of a new team because there are still a lot of unknowns amongst the newly formed assembly. As a general rule most of the parties involved in the team are still getting used to the workload, pace of work, deadlines and the validity of various tasks that need to be performed by the group.  In this state everything is questioned because there are so many unknowns. Items commonly questioned include the credentials of others on the team, the actual validity of a project, and the leadership abilities of the team leader.  This can be exemplified by looking at the interactions between animals when they first meet.  If we look at a scenario where two people are walking directly toward each other with their dogs. The dogs will automatically enter the Storming State because they do not know the other dog. Typically in this situation, they attempt to define which is more dominating via play or fighting depending on how the dogs interact with each other. Once dominance has been defined and accepted by both dogs then they will either want to play or leave depending on how the dogs interacted and other environmental variables. Once the Storming State has been realized then the Normalizing State takes over. This state is entered by a team once all the questions of the Storming State have been answered and the team has been tested by a few tasks or projects.  Typically, participants in the team are filled with energy, and comradery, and a strong alliance with team goals and objectives.  A high school football team is a perfect example of the Normalizing State when they start their season.  The player positions have been assigned, the depth chart has been filled and everyone is focused on winning each game. All of the players encourage and expect each other to perform at the best of their abilities and are united by competition from other teams. The Performing State is achieved by a team when its history, working habits, and culture solidify the team as one working unit. In this state team members can anticipate specific behaviors, attitudes, reactions, and challenges are seen as opportunities and not problems. Additionally, each team member knows their role in the team’s success, and the roles of others. This is the most productive state of a group and is where all the time invested working together really pays off. If you look at an Olympic figure skating team skate you can easily see how the time spent working together benefits their performance. They skate as one unit even though it is comprised of two skaters. Each skater has their routine completely memorized as well as their partners. This allows them to anticipate each other’s moves on the ice makes their skating look effortless. The final state of a team is the Adjourning State. This state is where accomplishments by the team and each individual team member are recognized. Additionally, this state also allows for reflection of the interactions between team members, work accomplished and challenges that were faced. Finally, the team celebrates the challenges they have faced and overcome as a unit. Currently in the workplace teams are divided into two different types: Co-located and Distributed Teams. Co-located teams defined as the traditional group of people working together in an office, according to Andy Singleton of Assembla. This traditional type of a team has dominated business in the past due to inadequate technology, which forced workers to primarily interact with one another via face to face meetings.  Team meetings are primarily lead by the person with the highest status in the company. Having personally, participated in meetings of this type, usually a select few of the team members dominate the flow of communication which reduces the input of others in group discussions. Since discussions are dominated by a select few individuals the discussions and group discussion are skewed in favor of the individuals who communicate the most in meetings. In addition, Team members might not give their full opinions on a topic of discussion in part not to offend or create controversy amongst the team and can alter decision made in meetings towards those of the opinions of the dominating team members. Distributed teams are by definition spread across an area or subdivided into separate sections. That is exactly what distributed teams when compared to a more traditional team. It is common place for distributed teams to have team members across town, in the next state, across the country and even with the advances in technology over the last 20 year across the world. These teams allow for more diversity compared to the other type of teams because they allow for more flexibility regarding location. A team could consist of a 30 year old male Italian project manager from New York, a 50 year old female Hispanic from California and a collection of programmers from India because technology allows them to communicate as if they were standing next to one another.  In addition, distributed team members consult with more team members prior to making decisions compared to traditional teams, and take longer to come to decisions due to the changes in time zones and cultural events. However, team members feel more empowered to speak out when they do not agree with the team and to notify others of potential issues regarding the work that the team is doing. Virtual teams which are a subset of the distributed team type is changing organizational strategies due to the fact that a team can now in essence be working 24 hrs a day because of utilizing employees in various time zones and locations.  A primary example of this is with customer services departments, a company can have multiple call centers spread across multiple time zones allowing them to appear to be open 24 hours a day while all a employees work from 9AM to 5 PM every day. Virtual teams also allow human resources departments to go after the best talent for the company regardless of where the potential employee works because they will be a part of a virtual team all that is need is the proper technology to be setup to allow everyone to communicate. In addition to allowing employees to work from home, the company can save space and resources by not having to provide a desk for every team member. In fact, those team members that randomly come into the office can actually share one desk amongst multiple people. This is definitely a cost cutting plus given the current state of the economy. One thing that can turn a team into a high-performing team is leadership. High-performing team leaders need to focus on investing in ongoing personal development, provide team members with direction, structure, and resources needed to accomplish their work, make the right interventions at the right time, and help the team manage boundaries between the team and various external parties involved in the teams work. A team leader needs to invest in ongoing personal development in order to effectively manage their team. People have said that attitude is everything; this is very true about leaders and leadership. A team takes on the attitudes and behaviors of its leaders. This can potentially harm the team and the team’s output. Leaders must concentrate on self-awareness, and understanding their team’s group dynamics to fully understand how to lead them. In addition, always learning new leadership techniques from other effective leaders is also very beneficial. Providing team members with direction, structure, and resources that they need to accomplish their work collectively sounds easy, but it is not.  Leaders need to be able to effectively communicate with their team on how their work helps the company reach for its organizational vision. Conversely, the leader needs to allow his team to work autonomously within specific guidelines to turn the company’s vision into a reality.  This being said the team must be appropriately staffed according to the size of the team’s tasks and their complexity. These tasks should be clear, and be meaningful to the company’s objectives and allow for feedback to be exchanged with the leader and the team member and the leader and upper management. Now if the team is properly staffed, and has a clear and full understanding of what is to be done; the company also must supply the workers with the proper tools to achieve the tasks that they are asked to do. No one should be asked to dig a hole without being given a shovel.  Finally, leaders must reward their team members for accomplishments that they achieve. Awards could range from just a simple congratulatory email, a party to close the completion of a large project, or other monetary rewards. Managing boundaries is very important for team leaders because it can alter attitudes of team members and can add undue stress to the team which will force them to loose focus on the tasks at hand for the group. Team leaders should promote communication between team members so that burdens are shared amongst the team and solutions can be derived from hearing the opinions of multiple sources. This also reinforces team camaraderie and working as a unit. Team leaders must manage the type and timing of interventions as to not create an even bigger mess within the team. Poorly timed interventions can really deflate team members and make them question themselves. This could really increase further and undue interventions by the team leader. Typically, the best time for interventions is when the team is just starting to form so that all unproductive behaviors are removed from the team and that it can retain focus on its agenda. If an intervention is effectively executed the team will feel energized about the work that they are doing, promote communication and interaction amongst the group and improve moral overall. High-performing teams are very import to organizations because they consistently produce high quality output and develop a collective purpose for their work. This drive to succeed allows team members to utilize specific talents allowing for growth in these areas.  In addition, these team members usually take on a sense of ownership with their projects and feel that the other team members are irreplaceable. References: http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/3127/Three-ways-to-organize-your-team-co-located-outsourced-or-global.aspx Katzenbach, J.R. & Smith, D.K. (1993). The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-performance Organization. Boston: Harvard Business School.

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• Introducing UPK 3.6 Simulation Help (You Say It and We Do It!)

  - by kathryn.lustenberger(at)oracle.com

  We would like to thank everyone that participated in the recent documentation survey that was conducted over the last several months. Your feedback is valuable and we appreciate the time you took to provide it. Many of you commented that you would like to have "UPKs for UPK" in the documentation. In response, we are pleased to announce the availability of Simulation Help. This unique help system is a blending of the text-based Developer help and a collection of approximately 200 simulations that show authors how to create, record, refine, localize, and publish content using the Developer. You can access Simulation Help at any time using the following link: http://download.oracle.com/technology/products/upk/index.html Save this link as a favorite or bookmark in your browser for easy access anytime. We have also provided a link to a short one-question survey so you can tell us what you think of the new Simulation Help. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BJT7LV6 Thanks again for your valuable feedback on the product documentation!

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• Team Leaders & Authors - Manage and Report Workflow using "Print an Outline" in UPK

  - by [email protected]

  Did you know you can "print an outline?" You can print any outline or portion of an outline. Why might you want to "print an outline" in UPK... Have you ever wondered how many topics you have recorded, how many of your topics are ready for review, or even better, how many topics are complete! Do you need to report your project status to management? Maybe you just like to have a copy of your outline to refer to during development. Included in this output is the outline structure as well as the layout defined in the Details View of the Outline Editor. To print an outline, you must open either a module or section in the Outline Editor. A set of default data columns is automatically included in the output; however, you can configure which columns you want to appear in the report by switching to the Details view and customizing the columns. (To learn more about customizing your columns refer to the Add and Remove Columns section of the Content Development.pdf guide) To print an outline from the Outline Editor: 1. Open a module or section document in the Outline Editor. 2. Expand the documents to display the details that you want included in the report. 3. On the File menu, choose Print and use the toolbar icons to print, view, or save the report to a file. Personally, I opt to save my outline in Microsoft Excel. Using the delivered features of Microsoft Excel you can add columns of information, such as development notes, to your outline or you can graph and chart your Project status. As mentioned above you can configure what columns you want to appear in the outline. When utilizing the Print an Outline feature in conjunction with the Managing Workflow features of the UPK Multi-user instance you as a Team Lead or Author can better report project status. Read more about Managing Workflow below. Managing Workflow: The Properties toolpane contains special properties that allow authors to track document status or State as well as assign Document Ownership. Assign Content State The State property is an editable property for communicating the status of a document. This is particularly helpful when collaborating with other authors in a development team. Authors can assign a state to documents from the master list defined by the administrator. The default list of States includes (blank), Not Started, Draft, In Review, and Final. Administrators can customize the list by adding, deleting or renaming the values. To assign a State value to a document: 1. Make sure you are working online. 2. Display the Properties toolpane. 3. Select the document(s) to which you want to assign a state. Note: You can select multiple documents using the standard Windows selection keys (CTRL+click and SHIFT+click). 4. In the Workflow category, click in the State cell. 5. Select a value from the list. Assign Document Ownership In many enterprises, multiple authors often work together developing content in a team environment. Team leaders typically handle large projects by assigning specific development responsibilities to authors. The Owner property allows team leaders and authors to assign documents to themselves and other authors to track who is responsible for a specific document. You view and change document assignments for a document using the Owner property in the Properties toolpane. To assign a document owner: 1. Make sure you are working online. 2. On the View menu, choose Properties. 3. Select the document(s) to which you want to assign document responsibility. Note: You can select multiple documents using the standard Windows selection keys (CTRL+click and SHIFT+click). 4. In the Workflow category, click in the Owner cell. 5. Select a name from the list. Is anyone out there already using this feature? Share your ideas with the group. Those of you new to this feature, give it a test drive and let us know what you think. - Kathryn Lustenberger, Oracle UPK & Tutor Outbound Product Management

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• Incorporating Sound in UPK 3.6.1

  - by [email protected]

  UPK 3.6.1 now offers developers the ability to easily record and edit sound from right within the UPK Developer. Sound can be recorded in either the concept pane or individual topic frames. A developer can record sound at the same time they're capturing a transaction or by adding sound after recording, on a frame-by-frame basis. The sound editor in UPK 3.6.1 allows developers to perform a variety of editing functions: play, insert sound or silence, delete, adjust amplification, and import or export sound files, just to name a few. Internally, Oracle Product Management is using this functionality to create "UPK-casts" for enablement purposes. We do this by capturing PowerPoint slides, then adding sound, allowing us to create our own recorded "webcasts". Because we develop these independently, we control the content and have more flexibility to edit the content as needed. Whether it's a change to a single frame or an entire topic, we can react quickly, providing our users with the most up-to-date information. And you don't need expensive equipment or a sound studio to achieve good sound quality. Depending on how your end users are accessing your content, a $35 head set can do the trick. Just be sure to follow the best practices for sound recording as outlined in the UPK documentation. Tip: we've found that we get the best results with sound consistency when we record all the sound for a topic at one sitting. UPK 3.6.1 is now available for download from Oracle E-Delivery. Upgrade today and have fun creating more robust, engaging content for your users! - Karen Rihs, Oracle UPK & Tutor Outbound Product Management

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• Extending UPK with Enablement Packs

  - by bill.x.miller

  We've mentioned in earlier posts that UPK Development keeps the tool up to date through the use of Enable Service Packs (ESP'S). Regular releases ensure that the UPK Developer supports updates to targeted applications as well as new Java updates. Installing an ESP is quick and easy. • Download the latest ESP from My Oracle Support (requires a My Oracle Support account). • Run the setup for each client machine that uses the UPK Developer • Run the Library Updates from one of the clients (multi-user only) Enablement Pack 1 for UPK 3.6.1 contains new features such as a new Tabbed Gateway, FireFox 3.6 support for the Player and SmartHelp, and several new target application versions. But a very exciting feature that is part of this ESP is now available to all Oracle E-Business Suite customers. Until now, a requirement for EBS customers who wish to record UPK content is to install delivered library files (CUSTOM.pll and ODPN.pll) on to the Oracle Application Server. These files were required to present context information to the UPK Developer so that content can be launched in a context sensitive manner. This requirement involved the Oracle system administrator to transfer, install and compile these libraries into the system. Usually a simple process, however, we understood the need to streamline the procedure. With ESP 1 for UPK 3.6.1, these pll files are no longer required. Now, a simple procedure from within the EBS application can make context available to the UPK recorder. From the System Profile, search for UPK: Change the Site field to Enable UPK Recording. Save the Form. Context information will now be made available to the UPK Recorder without involving the System Administrator or DBA. The setting you see here makes context available to all client machines recording content with UPK and does not affect the performance of your EBS application.

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• UPK 3.6.1 (is Coming)

  - by marc.santosusso

  In anticipation of the release of UPK 3.6.1, I'd like to briefly describe some of the features that will be available in this new version. Topic Editor in Tabs Topic Editors now open in tabs instead of separate Developer windows. This offers several improvements: First, the bubble editor can be docked and resized in the same way as other editor panes. That's right, you can resize the bubble editor! The second enhancement that this changes brings is an improved undo and redo which allows each action to be undone and redone in the Topic Editor. New Sound Editor The topic and web page editors include a new sound editor with all the bells and whistles necessary to record, edit, import, and export, sound. Sound can be captured during topic recording--which is great for a Subject Matter Expert (SME) to narrate what they're recording--or after the topic has been recorded. Sound can also be added to web pages and played on the concept panes of modules, sections and topics. Turn off bubbles in Topics Authors may opt to hide bubbles either per frame or for an entire topic. When you want to draw a user's attention to the content on the screen instead of the bubble. This feature works extremely well in conjunction with the new sound capabilities. For instance, consider recording conceptual information with narration and no bubbles. Presentation Output UPK content can be published as a Presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint format. Publishing for Presentation will create a presentation for each topic published. The presentation template can be customized Using the same methods offered for the UPK document outputs, allowing your UPK-generated presentations to match your corporate branding. Autosave and Recovery The Developer will automatically save your work as often as you would like. This affords authors the ability to recover these automatically saved documents if their system or UPK were to close unexpectedly. The Developer defaults to save open documents every ten minutes. Package Editor Enhancement Files in packages will now open in the associated application when double-clicked. Authors can also choose to "Open with..." from the context menu (AKA right click menu.) See It! Window See It! mode may now be launched in a non-fullscreen window. This is available from the kp.html file in any Player package. This version of See It! mode offers on-screen navigation controls including previous frame, next frame, pause etc. Firefox Enhancments The UPK Player will now offer both Do It! mode and sound playback when viewed using Firefox web browser. Player Support for Safari The UPK Player is now fully supported on the Safari web browser for both Mac OS and Windows platforms. Keep document checked out Authors may choose to keep a document checked out when performing a check in. This allows an author to have a new version created on the server and continue editing. Close button on individual tabs A close button has been added to the tabs making it easier to close a specific tab. Outline Editor Enhancements Authors will have the option to prevent concepts from immediately displaying in the Developer when an outline item is selected. This makes it faster to move around in the outline editor. Tell us which feature you're most excited to use in the comments.

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• UPK Content State

  - by peter.maravelias

  State is an editable property for communicating the status of a document in the UPK library. This is particularly helpful when working with other authors in a development team. Authors can assign a state to any document using the values that are defined in the master list. The default master list of State values includes Not Started, Draft, In Review, and Final (in the language installed on the server). Administrators can customize the list by adding, deleting, or renaming the values as well as sequencing the values as they will appear on the assignment list from the Properties pane. Let us know if or how you are using UPK Content States in your development efforts!

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• New User of UPK?

  - by [email protected]

  The UPK Developer comes with a variety of manuals to help support your organization in the development and deployment of content. The Developer manuals can be found in the \Documentation\Language Code\Reference folder where the Developer has been installed. As of 3.5.x the documentation can also be accessed via the Start menu, Start\Programs\User Productivity Kit\Documentation\Reference. Content Deployment.pdf: This manual provides information on how to deploy content to your audience. Content Development.pdf: This manual provides information on how to create, maintain, and publish content using the Developer. The content of this manual also appears in the Developer help system. Content Player.pdf: This manual provides instructions on how to view content using the Player. The content of this manual also appears in the Player help system. In-Application Support Guide.pdf: This manual provides information on how implement content-sensitive, in-application support for enterprise applications using Player content. Installation & Administration.pdf: This manual provides instructions for installing the Developer in a single-user or multi-user environment as well as information on how to add and manage users and content in a multi-user installation. An Administration help system also appears in the Developer for authors configured as administrators. This manual also provides instructions for installing and configuring Usage Tracking. Upgrade.pdf: This manual provides information on how to upgrade from a previous version to the current version. Usage Tracking Administration & Reporting.pdf: This manual provides instructions on how to manage users and usage tracking reports. - Kathryn Lustenberger, Oracle UPK Outbound Product Management

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• UPK Pre-Built Content Update

  - by Karen Rihs

  UPK pre-built content development efforts are always underway and growing. Over the last few months, the following new and upgraded modules became available:  NEW CONTENT RELEASES E-Business Suite 12.1 Field Service Manufacturing Operations Center Process Manufacturing:  System Administration Strategic Network Optimization U.S. Federal Financials Oracle Communications 11.1 Oracle Communications UPK for Pricing Design Center, Voice and Data Offerings Oracle Mobile Workforce 2.1.0 Administrative Setup User Tasks Primavera Primavera Portfolio Management 9.0 UPK CONTENT UPGRADES JDE E1 9.1 HCM Fundamentals for EnterpriseOne Manufacturing - Product Data Management Manufacturing Management Discrete Shop Floor Management Procurement and Subcontract Management JDE World A9.3 Accounts Payable Address Book  Common Foundation General Ledger For a list of modules currently available for each product line, visit the UPK Resource Library on Oracle.com. For more information on how your organization can take advantage of UPK pre-built content, see our previous blog,  The Value of UPK Pre-Built Content. - Karen Rihs, UPK Outbound Product Management

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• Oracle User Productivity Kit Translation

  - by ultan o'broin

  Oracle's customers just love the User Productivity Kit (UPK). I hear only great things about it from our international customers at the Oracle Usability Advisory Board meetings too. The UPK is the perfect solution for enterprise applications training needs (I previously reviewed a fine book about UPK btw). One question I am often asked is how source content created using the UPK can be translated into another language. I spoke with Peter Maravelias, Principal Product Strategy Manager for UPK about this recently. UPK is already optimized for easy source-target translation already. There is even a solution for re-recording demos. Here's what you can do to get your source content into another language: Use UPK's ability to automatically translate events and actions. UPK comes with XML templates that allow you to accomplish this in 21 languages with a simple publishing action switch. These templates even deal with the tricky business of using gender-based translations. Spanish localization template sample Japanese localization template sample Use the Import and Export localization features to export additional custom content in a format like XLIFF, easily handled by translation tools. You could also export and import in Word format. Re-record the sound (audio) files that go with the recordings, one per screen. UPK's granular approach to the sound files means that timing isn't an option. Retiming demos isn't required. A tip here with sound files and XLFF-exported custom content is to facilitate translation context by avoiding explicit references to actions going on in the screen recordings. A text based storyboard with screenshots accompanying the sound files should also be provided to the translators. Provide a glossary of terms too. Use the re-record option in UPK to record any demo from a translated application. This will allow all the translated UI labels to be automatically captured. You may be required to resize any action events here due to text expansion issues. Of course, you will need translated data in the translated application too, so plan for this in advance. However, source-target language skills aren't required for the re-recording. The UPK Player itself, of course, is also available from Oracle along with content and doc in 21 languages. The Developer and Setup is also translated in a smaller number of languages. Check the Oracle UPK website for latest details. UPK is a super solution for global enterprise applications training deployments allowing source content to be translated into multiple languages easily. See this post on the UPK blog for more insight too!

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• UPK Pre-built Content Now Available for Additional Product Lines

  - by Karen Rihs

  UPK pre-built content development efforts are always underway and growing, and now include the recent release of new UPK pre-built content modules for three additional product lines! Oracle Utilities for Meter Data Management 2.0.1 Administrative Setup User Tasks VEE and Usage Rules Working with Measurement Data Fusion 11g Release 1 Functional Setup Manager General Ledger Global Human Resources Project Portfolio Management Self Service Procurement Oracle Crystal Ball 11.1.2 Oracle Crystal Ball For the most recent list of modules currently available for each product line, visit the UPK Resource Library on Oracle.com. For more information on how your organization can take advantage of UPK pre-built content, see our previous blog, The Value of UPK Pre-Built Content.  - Karen Rihs, UPK Outbound Product Management

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• Smart Help with UPK

  - by [email protected]

  A short lesson on how awesome Smart Help is. In Oracle UPK speak, there are targeted and non-targeted applications. Targeted applications are Oracle EBS, PeopleSoft, Siebel, JD Edwards, SAP and a few others. Non-targeted applications are either custom built or other third party off the shelf applications. For most targeted applications you'll see better object recognition (during recording) and also Help Integration for that application. Help integration means that someone technical modifies the help link in your application to call up the UPK content that has been created. If you have seen this presented before, this is usually where the term context sensitive help is mentioned and the Do It mode shows off. The fact that UPK builds context sensitive help for its targeted applications automatically is awesome enough, but there is a whole new world out there and it's called "custom and\or third party apps." For the purposes of Smart Help and this discussion, I'm talking about the browser based applications. How does UPK support these apps? It used to be that you had to have your vendor try to modify the Help link to point to UPK or if your company had control over the applications configuration menus, then you get someone on your team to modify this for you. But as you start to use UPK for more than one, two or three applications, the administration of this starts to become daunting. Multiple administrators, multiple player packages, multiple call points, multiple break points, help doesn't always work the same way for every application (picture the black white infomercial with an IT person trying to configure a bunch of wires or something funny like that). Introducing Smart Help! (in color of course, new IT person, probably wearing a blue shirt and smiling). Smart help eliminates the need to configure multiple browser help integration points, and adds a icon to the users browser itself. You're using your browser to read this now correct? Look up at the icons on your browser, you have the home link icon, print icon, maybe an RSS feed icon. Smart Help is icon that gets added to the users browser just like the others. When you click it, it first recognizes which application you're in and then finds the UPK created material for you and returns the best possible match, for (hold on to your seat now) both targeted and non-targeted applications (browser based applications). But wait, there's more. It does this automatically! You don't have to do anything! All you have to do is record content, UPK and Smart Help do the rest! This technology is not new. There are customers out there today that use this for as many as six applications! The real hero here is SMART MATCH. Smart match is the technology that's used to determine which application you're in and where you are when you click on Smart Help. We'll save that for a one-on-one conversation. Like most other awesome features of UPK, it ships with the product. All you have to do is turn it on. To learn more about Smart Help, Smart Match, Targeted and Non-Targeted applications, contact your UPK Sales Consultant or me directly at [email protected]

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• Application Demos in UPK

  - by [email protected]

  Over the years, User Productivity Kit has expanded to include solutions to many project challenges. As of UPK 3.6.1, solutions are provided for pre and post application go-live learning, application testing, system documentation, presentation output, and more. New in UPK 3.6.1 are additional features that can be used effectively for application demo purposes. This can come in handy when you need to do a demo but don't want to show or can't show the live application. Maybe you're doing a presentation for a group of project stakeholders and want to focus on the business workflow implemented by the application rather than the mechanics of using it. Or possibly, you need to show the application but you're disconnected from any network preventing you from running the live application. In any of these cases, a presentation aid that represents the live application is what's needed. Previous versions of the UPK topic player would allow you to do this but would always show those UPK user interface elements that help a user learn the application. When you're presenting the narrative live, the UPK bubbles can be a distraction. UPK 3.6.1 provides some new features that allow you to control whether the bubbles display. There are two ways to hide bubbles in a topic. The first is a topic property that allows you to control bubbles across the entire topic. There are 3 settings for the Show Bubbles topic property. The default setting is Use frame settings which allows you to control whether bubbles display on a frame by frame basis. When you choose Always, the bubbles will always display regardless of the frame setting. The final choice is Never. Choosing Never will hide every bubble in your topic with one setting change. As with Always, choosing Never will ignore the frame setting. The second way to control the bubbles is at the frame level. First ensure that the topic's Show Bubbles property is set to Use frame settings. Navigate to the frame on which you want to turn off the bubble and click the Display bubble for this frame button to turn off the bubble. When you play the topic, the bubble will no longer be displayed. Depending on your needs, you might also use another longstanding UPK feature that allows you to control whether the action area displays on a frame. Just click the Action area on/off button to toggle its display. I've found the frame properties to be useful beyond creating presentation aids. When creating "See It!" only topics for more advanced users, I may hide the bubbles on some of the more straightforward frames. For example, if I have a form where one needs to fill out an address, I may display the first bubble in the sequence and explain what the subsequent steps are doing. I then hide bubbles on the remaining frames which are the more mechanical steps of entering the address. We'd like to hear your thoughts on this new UPK feature. Use the comments below to tell us how you've used it. John Zaums Senior Director, Product Development Oracle User Productivity Kit

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• What's New in Oracle UPK and Oracle UPK Professional

  Stuart Dunsmore, Sr. Director, Oracle UPK and Tutor Development, highlights the new features in Oracle User Productivity Kit and Oracle User Productivity Kit Professional. Listeners will learn how to gain strategic advantage from this offering.

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• Deleting Team Project in Team Foundation Server 2010

  - by Hosam Kamel

  I’m seeing a lot of people still using some old ways ported from TFS 2008 to delete a team project like TFSDeleteProject utility.   In TFS 2010 the administration tasks are made very easy to help you in a lot of administration stuff, for the deletion point specially you can navigate to the Administration Console then Select Team Project Collection Select the project collection contains the project you want to delete then navigate to Team Projects. Select the project then click Delete, you will have the option to delete any external artifacts and workspace too.   Hope it helps. Originally posted at "Hosam Kamel| Developer & Platform Evangelist"

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• Review of UPK Book

  - by ultan o'broin

  Better late than never, but my review of Dirk Manuel's UPK book was published in February. Oracle UPK - User Productivty Kit - is a cool tool for creating training material from the very environment users work in. An excellent accelerator to learning and reducing time spent reading manuals instead of productive activity! You can read more about UPK on the Oracle Web site.

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• Does a team of developers need a manager?

  - by Amadiere

  Background: I'm currently part of a team of four: 1 manager, 1 senior developer and 2 developers. We do a range of bespoke in-house systems / projects (e.g. 6-8 weeks) for an organisation of around 3500 staff, as well as all the maintenance and support required from the systems that have been created before. There is not enough of us to do all the work that is potentially coming our way - we're understaffed. Management acknowledge this, but budget restraints limit our ability to recruit additional members to the team (even if we make the salary back in savings). The Change This leaves us where we are now. Our manager is due to leave his role for pastures new, leaving a vacancy in the team. Management are using this opportunity to restructure our team which would see the team manager role replaced by another developer and another senior developer. Their logic being that we need more developers, so here's a way of funding it (one of the roles is partially funded from another vacant post). The team would have no direct line manager and the roles and responsibilities would be divided up between the seniors and the (relatively new to post) service manager (a non-technical role with little-to-no development knowledge/experience whose focus is shared amongst a number of other teams and individuals) - who would be our next actual manager up the food chain. I guess the final question is: Is it possible to run a development team without an manager? Have you had experience of this? And what things could go wrong / could be of benefit to us? I'd ideally like to "see the light" and the benefits of doing things this way, or come up with some points for argument against it.

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• Dealing with selfish team member(s)

  - by thegreendroid

  My team is facing a difficult quandary, a couple of team members are essentially selfish (not to be confused with dominant!) and are cherry-picking stories/tasks that will give them the most recognition within the company (at sprint reviews etc. when all the stakeholders are present). These team members are very good at what they do and are fully aware of what they are doing. When we first started using agile about a year ago, I can say I was quite selfish too (coming from a very individual-focused past). I took ownership of certain stories and didn't involve anyone else in it, which in hindsight wasn't the right thing to do and I learnt from that experience almost immediately. We are a young team of very ambitious twenty somethings so I can understand the selfishness to some extent (after all everyone should be ambitious!). But the level to which this selfishness has reached of late has started to bother me and a few others within my team. The way I see it, agile/scrum is all about the team and not individuals. We should be looking out for each other and helping each other improve. I made this quite clear during our last retrospective, that we should be fair and give everyone a chance. I'll wait and see what comes out of it in the next few sprints. In the meantime, what are some of the troubles that you have faced with selfish members and how did you overcome them?

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• UPK 3.6.1 Enablement Service Pack 1

  - by marc.santosusso

  UPK 3.6.1 Enablement Service Pack 1 now available on My Oracle Support as Patch ID 9533920 (requires My Oracle Support account). Below is a list of the enhancements included in this Enablement Service Pack. Tabbed Gateway Users now have the option to deliver multiple help resources through the in-application support using UPK's new tabbed gateway. This feature is managed using the Configuration Utility for In-Application Support. This feature is documented in the In-Application Support Guide. Firefox 3.6 The latest release of Mozilla Firefox, version 3.6, is now supported by the UPK Player, SmartHelp browser add-on, and SmartMatch recording technology. Oracle E-Business Suite -- Added support for version 12.1.2 for enhanced object and context recognition. -- The UPK PLL is no longer need for Oracle versions 12.1.2 and higher. Agile PLM Agile PLM version 9.3 supported for enhanced object recognition. Customer Needs Management Customer Needs Management schema 1.0.014 is supported for context recognition. Siebel CRM Siebel CRM (On Premise) versions 8.2, 8.1.1.2, 8.0.0.9, and 8.1.1 build 21112 (in addition to the previously supported build 21111) supported for enhanced object and context recognition. SAP SAP GUI for HTML version 7.10 patch 16 supported for enhanced object and context recognition. CA -- CA Clarity PPM version R12.5 supported for context recognition. -- CA Service Desk version R12.5 supported for context recognition. Java Added support for Java 6 update 12

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