Learn Oracle self service personalization with example

What is self-service personalization

Since you have visited this articles, its evident that you know what is oracle self-service personalization. At this moment you are more interesting in knowing how to do personalize a form rather than lengthy theory. You may have different requirements like hiding some unwanted fields, changing the label, display the hidden fields, adding new tip message etc. Through self-service personalization we can achieve all of these. You may also be aware that personalization is supported by oracle and not considered as customization. So if you have done any personalization, which is not working as per the expectation, you can raise a service request with oracle and get their help.

Learn self-service personalization with example

Now its time to learn the basics of self-service personalization through an example. Let’s assume that we have a requirement to put an additional tip “iavinash.com is an excellent website to learn oracle, please visit there often for new articles” on one OTL time entry page.

We will walk through step by step to achieve this requirement. however, to get the result we must complete some prerequisites. Those steps are given below.

Enable self service personalization profile options

Navigation : System Administrator » Profile » System

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First you will need to enable few system profile options, which will give you access to start your personalization. Those profile options are given below. Remember its advisable to enable first two profile options at user label (your own account)

Once you change/update the profile option, please do not forget to logout and login again to take those profiles options into the effect.

Personalize the page to get required changes

Once you log in back after changing the profile option you will see a new page link “Personalize Page” as shown in the image below.

Now to start personalizing your page please first navigate to the page you want to personalize. In this example we are personalizing the “Create Timecard” page. Navigation OTL Self-service time and expense » Time » Create Timecard

Once you are on the right page click on the link “Personalize Page” your page will look like similar to this.

It’s again advisable to note down the document name as in this example document name is “/oracle/apps/hxc/selfservice/timecard/webui/TcActivitiesPG”. This document name is useful when you migrate the personalization to other instance, specially production.

When you scroll down the page you will see the radio button “Complete View” and below that a link “Expand All”, click on them and it will expand the page, which will help you to see all elements you can personalize.

Create a new Tip (message) on oracle self-service page

Now its time to create a new Tip message. For that click on the create Item (as shown in the previous image) and it will bring a new page like below. Just change the item style value to “Tip” to get screen like the one shown below.

Now enter the details as follows

Once you enter the details click on apply. and return to original page by clicking on “Return to application”

Now you must see a page like below

How to move the personalization to production?

This is one of the famous question asked during interview. You see that we have personalized the form but this we have only done in our test instance. We need to move this personalization to production so that it appears on live instance. While moving the personalization you will basically have following two challenges

1. You do not have required responsibility in production : – In your test/dev instance you can assign responsibilities to yourself and do any changes but that is not the case in production. Suppose you will have to personalize a responsibility that is only given to limited employees (CEO or Managers) how will you personalize the page without getting access. To solve this problem you can assign Functional Administrator responsibility to your self. Using this responsibility you can personalize any responsibility/page. If you have gone through the article carefully you would remember that we asked you to note down the document name of that page.  Using that document name you can personalize the page using functional administrator responsibility. I am not going to describe that how to do that but you can follow below steps
   1. Navigate to Functional Administrator » click on Personalization Tab
   2. In document path enter the document name you have got earlier
   3. Click on go, which will bring the result
   4. From the result click on “Personalize Page” pencil icon
   5. In the Next page you enter the level at which you want the personalization to take effect. Ex. Responsibility, Organization Etc
   6. Click on Apply and it will take you to the page where you can personalize the page. You can now follow all the steps we have described in detail so far.
2. There are too many personalization to move to production :- By now you would have got the feel that while personalizing the page we need to be really careful otherwise we end up breaking the page. What if we have many personalization to be done of different different page, specially when we go live. In such cases we do not do them again manually in production but upload the personalization already done in test instance. To know how this is done, please follow the oracle note “How To Move Self Service Personalization From One Instance To Other ? (Doc ID 1462701.1)”

Step 1: Source Instance

1. Update the profile FND: Personalization Document Root Path with the appropriate path in the source Instance
2. Login in to Functional Administrator -> Personalization Tab -> Click on Import / Export tab
3. Select the necessary Module
4. Once the necessary module is checked click on Export to File System
5. The file will be imported in the path mentioned above

Step 2: Copy the file created above in the destination instance path

Step 3: Destination Instance

1. Update the profile FND: Personalization Document Root Path with the appropriate path in the Destination Instance
2. Login in to Functional Administrator ->Personalization Tab -> Click on Import / Export tab-> Click on Exported Personalization -> Select the necessary Module ->Click on Import from File System button
3. The file will be imported from the path mentioned above

Now all the personalizations will be moved from Source Instance to Destination Instance

Select the application as Per.

External useful links to know more about self-service personalization

Unable To Set Self-Service Personalization Context At Organization Level (Doc ID 739397.1)

What Profiles Must Be Set For Personalizations Links To Appear And Take Effect In Self Service? (Doc ID 454014.1)

How To Move Self Service Personalization From One Instance To Other ? (Doc ID 1462701.1)

Interview questions on self-service personalization

Here are some basic interview questions in self-service personalization:-

1. What is personalization and how it is different than customization?
2. What are the profile options we need to enable to do the personalization?
3. How do you move the personalization to production, what are the best practices?
4. How do you know if there is any personalization exists on a particular page?
5. You have personalized a page but it is not taking into effect, what could be the reason?
6. What are the different level you can personalize a form and which has higher precedence?

Note : If you have any additional question, please post them to our forum.