In this fourth part of our new series looking into the exciting new developments around Web-authored custom rendered Flows in Oracle Intelligent Advisor, we look at what it takes to get the Example (Student Benefits, a project that already existed in Oracle Policy Modeling, and which you would be advised to spend a few minutes with to understand the demonstration a little) Flow to appear in your browser.
Recall the basic platform elements. This “new world” is made up of (these are links to other content or previous articles in this series):
As of today, there is no Live Mode or “Debug” natively in the Web-authoring. So for the purposes of showing the Flow in action, you will have to install some extra software and do a few simple steps. It all comes down to the fact that the great people at the Oracle Intelligent Advisor team have given us everything we need to get it up and running, we just have a few extra steps to perform.
The custom renderer that the Oracle Intelligent Advisor team have provided as a demonstration, includes concepts that will be very useful – such as they demonstrate authentication and getting a JSON Web Token, as well as simulating a data connection to test a data element defined in the Flow Scheme. It’s pretty cool and such a great way to consolidate what you’ve read either in the documentation or in the previous articles here on this site. The entire process is documented in a PDF file that the team also provides, so the video below just walks you through the different steps and shows you visually what to do and where to click!
So here are the links to get you started (these are exernal links):
- Node.js Download Page
- The Custom Renderer Example plus the JSON Files to import into your Hub
- The Flow API to be included in the Custom Renderer folder
To learn how to set them up, either read the PDF that is included in (2) above, or watch this video for a discussion and walkthrough.
The new world is upon us, and many will feel that they now have a mountain to climb in terms of skills and knowledge required to keep up. In the video we address this point, but we can also repeat it here – this new way of building interview Flows gives more power, more choice to organisations so they can build better experiences – and for those of us who are not technical, it does not really change much in terms of how we conceive and build interview Flows, Rules and other things that we do today.
In fact it actually makes it easier to be more productive since we no longer have to worry about Styles, Layouts, CSS, HTML and what have you. We build our logical Flow and then the rendering professionals take over, which is how it should be.
