System and method for providing drag and drop functionality in a communities framework

• US 8,255,818 B2
• Filed: 03/09/2006
• Issued: 08/28/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 11/17/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Bales, Christopher E., Coates, Charles
• Primary Examiner(s): Rinehart, Mark
• Assistant Examiner(s): STITT, ERIK V
• Application Number:
  US11/371,767
• Publication Number:
  US 20070113194A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,364 Days
• Field of Search: 715/769, 715/764, 715/751, 715/742, 715/810, 345/329, 345/348, 345/500
• US Class Current: 715/769
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0486 Drag-and-drop

Abstract

A community accessible via a portal can be provided for maintaining user membership in a collaborative computing environment. Collaboration resources can be displayed on the portal page. Drag and drop functionality can be provided, which enables a community member to drag drop some resource into a target area, thereby causing a computer to execute an action upon the drop. A drag and drop tag library can be provided for allowing a developer to add this functionality to selected resources. For example, a draggable resource tag can be used by the developer to specify the resource displayed on the portal page, that is to be selected and dragged by a user. A resource drop zone tag can specify a particular area on the portal page into which the draggable resource will be dropped. The action can be a Javascript function call, a form or a page flow action initiated upon the drop.

Claims

1. A drag and drop system comprising:

a computer having a user interface and a portal page rendered thereon;

a community framework on said computer that includes a set of files to allow users to create one or more communities of user members having access to a plurality of collaboration resources wherein each of the plurality of collaboration resources is associated with a node of a plurality of nodes in a repository, wherein the collaboration resources are data types including at least one of the following;

a document, a group note, an announcement and an issue, said community framework further including

a draggable first collaboration resource of the plurality of collaboration resources displayed on the portal page configured to be selected and dragged;

a resource drop zone portion of the portal page associated with a second collaboration resource of the plurality of collaboration resources that specifies the location of the draggable resource to be dropped; and

a drag and drop tag library that comprises a first tag that is used to include the tag library into the portal page, a second tag that specifies the first draggable resource and a third tag that identifies the resource drop zone portion of the portal page where the first draggable resource is enabled to be dropped;

wherein the tag library is used to add drag and drop functionality to the community framework by employing the first tag, the second tag and the third tag;

wherein during customizing the one or more communities, the computer reads the first tag, the second tag and the third tag and, based on reading the second tag, the computer determines which resource is draggable and based on reading the third tag, enables the first draggable resource to be dragged and dropped into the drop zone portion of the portal page; and

wherein the computer executes an action upon the dropping of the draggable resource in the resource drop zone, wherein the action causes an interlinking relationship to be established between the draggable first collaboration resource and the second collaboration resource, wherein the interlinking relationship is represented by a linking object created in the second collaboration resource, and, when the linking object is clicked on, the linking object directs the user interface to navigate from the second collaboration resource to the draggable first collaboration resource, and wherein upon the dropping of the draggable resource, the computer sends a dynamic content call to a remote server to update the resource drop zone area of the portal page with an HTML fragment, without refreshing the entire portal page.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the action executed is a Javascript function call and wherein the resource drop zone tag further includes a Javascript function call attribute for specifying the action.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein the action is a page flow action initiated when the draggable resource is dropped and wherein the resource drop zone tag further includes a page flow action attribute for specifying the action.

4. The system of claim 1 wherein the action executed is a form action and wherein the resource drop zone tag further includes a form action attribute for specifying the action to be performed upon the drop.

5. The system of claim 1 wherein:

the repository is connected to the computer and has one or more resources stored thereon for containing community data and wherein the one or more resources is displayed on the portal page.

6. The system of claim 1 wherein a developer is capable of using the draggable resource tag and the drop zone tag to enable users to drag and drop resources in the communities framework.

7. The system of claim 1 wherein the draggable resource tag further includes a resource identifier attribute for specifying the unique identifier of the resource to be dragged and dropped.

8. The system of claim 1 further comprising:

a drag drop script tag for including the necessary Javascript libraries into the page, the Javascript libraries enabling the action to be performed.

9. The system of claim 1 further comprising:

a community accessed via the portal, the community including one or more members having access to the draggable resource and capable of sharing the draggable resource.

18. The system of claim 1 wherein the interlinking relationship allows a search service to search all related collaboration resources to a particular collaboration resource.

19. The system of claim 1 wherein the interlinking relationship allows the selection of a portlet to show an issue that is related to a particular collaboration resource brought up from another portlet.

10. A method for dragging and dropping resources, comprising:

providing a computer having a user interface and a portal page rendered thereon;

providing a community framework on said computer that includes a set of files to allow users to create one or more communities of user members having access to a plurality of collaboration resources wherein each of the plurality of collaboration resources is associated with a node of a plurality of nodes in a repository, wherein the collaboration resources are data types including at least one of the following;

a document, a group note, an announcement and an issue;

said community framework further including

a draggable first collaboration resource of the plurality of collaboration resources displayed on the portal page and configured to be selected and dragged by a user;

a resource drop zone portion of the portal page associated with a second collaboration resource of the plurality of collaboration resources that specifies the targeted area where the first collaboration resource is to be dropped; and

a drag and drop tag library that comprises a first tag that is used to include the tag library into the portal page, a second tag that specifies the first draggable resource and a third tag that identifies the resource drop zone portion of the portal page where the first draggable resource is enabled to be dropped;

wherein the tag library is used to add drag and drop functionality to the community framework by employing the first tag, the second tag and the third tag;

wherein during customizing the one or more communities, the computer reads the first tag, the second tag and the third tag and, based on reading the second tag, the computer determines which resource is draggable and based on reading the third tag, enables the first draggable resource to be dragged and dropped into the drop zone portion of the portal page;

executing an action upon the dropping of the draggable first collaboration resource in the resource drop zone, wherein the action causes an interlinking relationship to be established between the draggable first collaboration resource and the second collaboration resource, wherein the interlinking relationship is represented by a linking object created in the second collaboration resource, and, when the linking object is clicked on, the linking object directs the user interface to navigate from the second collaboration resource to the draggable first collaboration resource; and

sending, upon the dropping of the draggable resource, a dynamic content call to a remote server to update the resource drop zone area of the portal page with an HTML fragment, without refreshing the entire portal page.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein the action executed is a Javascript function call and wherein the resource drop zone tag further includes a Javascript function call attribute for specifying the action.

12. The method of claim 10 wherein the action is a page flow action initiated when the draggable resource is dropped and wherein the resource drop zone tag further includes a page flow action attribute for specifying the action.

13. The method of claim 10 wherein the action executed is a form action and wherein the resource drop zone tag further includes a form action attribute for specifying the action to be performed upon the drop.

14. The method of claim 10 further comprising:

providing a repository connected to the computer and having one or more resources stored thereon for containing community data and wherein the one or more resources is displayed on the portal page.

15. The method of claim 10 wherein the draggable resource tag and the drop zone tag are used by the developer to enable users to drag and drop resources in the communities framework.

16. The method of claim 10 wherein the draggable resource tag further includes a resource identifier attribute for specifying the unique identifier of the resource to be dragged and dropped.

17. A computer-readable storage medium having instructions stored thereon that when executed by one or more processors cause the one or more processors to:

provide a computer having a user interface and a portal page rendered thereon;

provide a community framework on said computer that includes a set of files to allow users to create one or more communities of user members having access to a plurality of collaboration resources wherein each of the plurality of collaboration resources is associated with a node of a plurality of nodes in a repository, wherein the collaboration resources are data types including at least one of the following;

a document, a group note, an announcement and an issue;

said community framework further including

a draggable first collaboration resource of the plurality of collaboration resources displayed on the portal page and configured to be selected and dragged by a user;

a resource drop zone portion of the portal page associated with a second collaboration resource of the plurality of collaboration resources that specifies the targeted area where the first collaboration resource is to be dropped; and

a drag and drop tag library that comprises a first tag that is used to include the tag library into the portal page, a second tag that specifies the first draggable resource and a third tag that identifies the resource drop zone portion of the portal page where the first draggable resource is enabled to be dropped;

wherein the tag library is used to add drag and drop functionality to the community framework by employing the first tag, the second tag and the third tag;

wherein during customizing the one or more communities, the computer reads the first tag, the second tag and the third tag and, based on reading the second tag, the computer determines which resource is draggable and based on reading the third tag, enables the first draggable resource to be dragged and dropped into the drop zone portion of the portal page;

execute an action upon the dropping of the draggable first collaboration resource in the resource drop zone, wherein the action causes an interlinking relationship to be associated between the draggable first collaboration resource and the second collaboration resource, wherein the interlinking relationship is represented by a linking object created in the second collaboration resource, and, when the linking object is clicked on, the linking object directs the user interface to navigate from the second collaboration resource to the draggable first collaboration resource; and

send, upon the dropping of the draggable resource, a dynamic content call to a remote server to update the resource drop zone area of the portal page with an HTML fragment, without refreshing the entire portal page.