Understanding Discussion Forums
Discussion forums in Oracle's PeopleSoft Interaction Hub provide a platform that groups can use to discuss topics of interest. Participants can post discussion topics, such as issues, suggestions, or questions, and receive replies and feedback. Discussion forums enable multiple relevant individuals to contribute to the review and resolution of a question. Participants can monitor the forums to which they belong using summary and detail pages. In addition, the Discussion Forums pagelet and the Discussion Posts pagelet, each of which can be placed on a participant's homepage, can be used to monitor posts in discussion forums and workspace discussions respectively.
In PeopleSoft Interaction Hub, discussion forums can be created as “standalone” in portals and sites, or as an integrated module of a collaborative workspace. Standalone discussion forums can be accessed through the My Discussion Forums page and the Discussion Forums homepage pagelet. In addition, other PeopleSoft Interaction Hub features integrate some aspects and pages from discussion forums. These PeopleSoft Interaction Hub features include:
The Discussions module of collaborative workspaces.
The Related Discussion related content service.
Action items, documents in the content management system, and documents in the Documents module of collaborative workspaces.
Context Manager's Related Discussion pagelet.
When portal system administrators create a standalone discussion forum, they can then assign a moderator to manage each forum. The discussion forum moderator determines the membership and privileges for the forum, and has the option to manage the forum as moderated or unmoderated. Forum moderation can be applied to all posts (new topics or replies), or to first-time posts only. If moderation is set to all posts, the moderator has to approve each post before it can be viewed by the forum participants. If moderation is set to first post only, then the first time that a member makes a post (new topic or reply), it has to be approved by the forum moderator. The approval or rejection of a post causes an email notification to be sent to the participant who posted to the forum.
This section also provides an overview of:
Discussion forum privileges.
Discussions module in collaborative workspaces.
Related Discussion related content service.
Discussion forums in the Related Discussion pagelet.
Field or Control |
Description |
|---|---|
|
Indicates that no alerts are set at this level. At the forum level, this indicates that a forum-level alert has not been set. At the topic level, this indicates that neither a forum-level alert nor a topic-level alert have been set. |
|
Indicates that an alert is set at this level. At the forum level, this indicates that a forum-level alert has been set. At the topic level, this indicates that either a forum-level alert, a topic-level alert, or both have been set. |
|
Designates that the discussion topic does not yet contain any replies. Note: This icon also represents replies in the threaded view of a topic. |
|
Designates that the discussion topic contains one or more replies. Note: This icon also represents a topic on alert subscription pages. |
|
Represents a discussion forum on alert subscription pages. |
The following table summarizes discussion forum privileges granted by portal role or privilege set ID. Privilege set IDs are defined on the Define Privilege Sets page. Privileges are assigned to discussion forum participants on the Forum Privileges page.
|
Role ID or Privilege Set ID |
Description |
Privileges |
|---|---|---|
|
PAPP_SYSTEM_ADMIN |
Interaction Hub System Admin role. |
A portal administrator can:
In addition, as a participant of discussion forum a portal administrator can:
|
|
EPPDF_MODERATOR |
Moderator privilege set. |
|
|
EPPDF_CONTRIBUTOR |
Contributor privilege set. |
|
|
EPPDF_VIEWER |
Viewer privilege set. |
View discussion forum topics and replies. |
The Discussions module provides a platform that workspace members can use to discuss topics of interest. The discussion can be configured as moderated or unmoderated, and members can post discussion topics and replies. In addition, members can monitor current topics using the Recent Discussions pagelet on the workspace homepage. The pages used to participate in discussions in the Discussions module are the same pages used for standalone discussion forums.
In addition, the Discussion Posts pagelet provides information from all workspace discussions to which a workspace member has access. Members can add this pagelet to homepage tabs, dashboard pages, or WorkCenter pages.
The Related Discussion related content service provides the features of PeopleSoft Interaction Hub discussion forums to other PeopleSoft applications, such as PeopleSoft FSCM, PeopleSoft HCM, and so on.
For example, using the Related Discussion service, users can collaborate to share critical data about a specific vendor or vendors (for example, on a purchase requisition process page). In this example, the vendor name or ID could serve as the context of the discussions. As the user navigates to other POs raised to a specific vendor, all the discussions pertinent to the vendor can be discovered through a search.
The Related Discussion pagelet provides the features of discussion forums in the Context Manager frame on the right side of the page. The Related Discussion pagelet can be assigned to menu items through Context Manager.