Welcome to Oracle Collaboration Suite Discussions
Oracle Discussions provides you with the ability to create online forums, also referred to as bulletin boards, and to access these forums using a Web browser. Depending on your access levels, you can post messages to the forums or simply browse through them. All messages and responses are organized by categories, forums, and topics. Categories are created within a root category. Forums are created within a category. Topics are groups of messages within a specific forum. The following graphic illustrates the Oracle Discussions hierarchy.
Some of the key features of Oracle Discussions are the following:
Favorite Discussions
You can “bookmark” your favorite categories, forums, and messages for quick access. Your favorites are displayed on the My Discussions page in the Oracle Discussions Web client. This page also displays all messages posted by you as well as all replies to your posts.
Discussions Bar
The Discussions Bar provides a snapshot of announcements, Favorites, recent messages, and popular topics, making it easier for you to quickly navigate to these areas of Oracle Discussions.
Discussion Views
You can view a discussion topic and all replies to that topic in either a flat view or a threaded view. The Flat View displays all of a topic’s messages on the same page. The Threaded View displays each message in a topic one at a time, along with the full topic structure.
RSS Compatibility
RSS, also known as Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, is an Extensible Markup Language (XML) format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites. Oracle Discussions provides you with the ability to add categories, forums and topics to the RSS reader of your choice. This lets you track their activity without logging in to Discussions. Note that using an RSS reader limits you to read-only access to Discussions items.
Attachments
You can attach relevant documents to messages you post. Other users can download those attachments when viewing your messages.
Searching
All messages are automatically indexed so you can use keywords to perform a quick search. The Advanced Search feature lets you search by keywords, author, message size, number of replies, and date ranges.
E-mail Participation
Categories and forums can appear as Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) shared folders in your e-mail client. You can view messages posted to a forum in the same way that you read your e-mail messages.
You can also reply to an existing forum message using e-mail or you can post new topics by sending an e-mail message to the forum’s e-mail address. The topic structure is preserved even when messages are sent using e-mail.