After seeing the initial demonstration of the planned Fusion Applications I wanted to provide my impressions. Any user interface is critical to application users since it is what they actually work in each day.
Oracle has taken a strong stance on using Web 2.0 capabilities in the new User Interface (UI) as can be seen by the following shown in the demo:
- Supports Links to Web Applications (they showed LinkedIn and FaceBook as examples)
- Allows Tagging (an individual user to “tag” something to easily come back to it later)
- Built-in search based on User role (is prominently displayed at the top in the banner)
- Desktop Widgets (similar to those available from Yahoo or on Windows Vista)
- Contextual Help with Audio Visual capabilities
- Collaboration (chat, click-to-email, presence, wiki’s, RSS feeds)
For those not familiar with RSS (Really Simple Syndication), it provides a notification of changes to a given website so that you are notified and don’t have to constantly check on that site. You may not be aware of it but RSS is built-in to Outlook 2007 and when you set up a RSS “feed” it brings the information in like an email and makes it available for your reading. Also a note about Wiki’s. These provide a collaborative workspace where groups can share documents and comments.
As noted in a previous post the speed of screen refreshes in the Web Browser (Firefox was shown) is excellent since they use the partial page refresh capabilities to minimize the amount of web traffic from the Application Server to the client.
Several of the applications features, in addition to the above, that will help business users are the use of customizable dashboards. Existing dashboards are pre-defined for common application roles but users can heavily customize their “home page” to only view the key data they want to monitor for their job role. Numerous types of graphs and charts are enabled in the dashboards including pie, bar and spider charts. In the HR module the work is organized around an Organization Chart allowing drill down/up. This was very impressive allowing resizing of the display area and drill down (based on role) to lots of information about an individual. A less obvious but key feature in the embedded analytics was the ability to look at operational information, such as customers using an Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) approach. The application user could filter data displayed ont he screen by various criteria. For example, review customers by sales total or geography or other criteria.
The UI is well-designed with the left side devoted to Navigation and center to your current task and the right side providing contextual information. Oracle is using their Application Development Framework (ADF) in conjunction with JDeveloper to provide the look-and-feel across the applications. While they didn’t specify I know they are using the new WebLogic Server as the Application Server rather than iAS the current application server used for 11i and R12 of the E-Business Suite.
The speaker said that many reports are built-in but with the use of BI Publisher, new reports can easily be added.
As I wrap up this post, here are some of the other “cool” features that caught my eye:
- The use of slider bars to adjust parameters.
- Links to external web sites like LinkedIn and Facebook (for more people information)
- Role Based Access Control at all levels
- Customizable screens for the end user
- Ability to un-dock a portion of the screen for other use
- Uncluttered look to the UI
- Workflow capabilities for common processes using WorkLists and Activity Guides (with graphical representations)
- Pop-ups with information about customers, vendors and people when their information is included in the data
To summarize, I’m very impressed with the User Interface and can see how it will greatly benefit application users by improving their productivity and knowledge of what is happening in their area.