Adding a custom icon to Oracle Endeca Information Discovery

Adding an icon for a user community in Oracle Information Discovery can done exclusively using functionality under Control Panel.  However, in many cases the icon you want to add is larger than the size provided in the default Endeca theme.   The steps below show how to modify the Endeca theme to accommodate a larger icon. 

1. Change the icon under Control Panel -> Communities -> Manage Pages (of your selected community) -> Settings then click on the Logo tab. Select your file, check Use Logo and then Save.

2. Go to your Community and look at your banner. Your image may be cutoff if it was larger than the defaul “Oracle” image. You made need to adjust the size of the Endeca theme to accommodate a larger image.  Notice below how the Oracle image invades the text and black bar.

3. You can adjust the banner size by going to C:\Oracle\Endeca\Discovery\2.3.0\endeca-portal\tomcat-6.0.29\webapps\endeca-theme and create a directory called _diffs. Go inside that directory and create a subfolder called css Now go back into the original css directory and copy the custom.css file into the css directory you just created in the _diffs folder. This is a Liferay best practice that supports upgrades.  You should have a directory structure as follows:

4. Edit custom.css in _diffs/css. I made changes to height and set it to 80px and also left and set it to 300px to move the “Endeca Information Discovery” text over.  

5. Restart your Studio service to pick up your changes.  You may need a few iterations of making changes and testing to get the sizes exactly what you want.  Remember to restart the Studio service have each change. 

Oracle Endeca Information Discovery – Changing a data source on a metrics bar component

 

I  was working with Oracle Endeca Information Discovery 2.3 and needed to change the data source on a few metric bar components.  The first thing I did was create an export of the community in a .lar file.  This was done under Control Panel –> Communities –> Actions –> Manage Pages –> Export/Import –> Export.

I tried changing the data souce under the Control Panel under Data Source Bindings.  I have used this method for other components so I figured the metrics bar component would be similar. 

When I went back to my metrics bar I saw I had a problem.  I got the dreaded “This component requires additional configuration”. warning.  

 

Inspecting the metrics bar component shows that the EQL is missing.

I restored my Endeca community using the import function and tried a different approach.  This time I went directly into the component and selected the drop down box and selected the new data source.  I hit Update data source button. I was disappointed to see the EQL disappeared.  I had an empty metrics bar component and the dreaded “This component required additional configuration”. 

I restored my Endeca community using the import function and tried a third approach.  This time I copied the EQL and saved it to a text file.  I also copied the Display Name of each of the metric bars and noted down the Format.

I updated the data source and the EQL disappeared.  This time I was prepared.   I re-entered my EQL and hit the Test EQL button.  Once that came back I hit the Load Metrics button.  Then I entered the Display Name and Format for each metric bar.  Success.  The data source was changed. The EQL and metrics bars were present for duty.  I did not miss seeing the “This component requires additional configuration”. warning.