How to customize DXA theme - Step 1 Launch default HTML design

DXA is build using responsive design HTML5 and Bootstrap.It gives us the flexibility to change the design as per requirement.

Let's start with spinning the already existing HTML-design but before that, we need to install prerequisites.

1. Install Node.js
2. Instsll npm,grunt and bower.
• npm install -g npm@3
• npm install -g grunt-cli
• npm install -g bower.

Install npm

Install Gurnt-cli

Install Bower

Once you have done with installations run below command to check node and npm version.

I already have the latest version of Node.js and npm install on my machine.Now let's build the assets we need to copy the content of .\html\desgin from the installation media to any location and run the 

1. npm install
2. brower install 
3. grunt build

What this will do, this will build all the assets and can found in the ./dist folder.

Let's run the site locally and for that we need to run grunt command.

grunt serve

Grunt serve

A web server will be started at http://localhost:9000.

Whitelabel HTML Design

For next step on how to edit HTML, create HTML-Design package and update CMS.

Happy coding and keep sharing!!!                                                                                       

Universal WorkList Alchemy Plugin for SDL WEB

Centralized way of Managing all the tasks Universal Work List is used to manage ,respond to ,assign daily task or delegate tasks to peers.With the help of this plugin you will able to manage all our task and communication from CMS.

Features of this plugin

1. Create Task and assign to peers.
2. Update Task status and put your comments.
3. Re-assign task you any user.
4. Assign any task to yourself.
5. Dashboard.
6. Powered by SOLR 6.5

Let's go through the each screens one by one and understand how its works and its functionality. 

Landing page where you will see all the task assign to you and you can filter them as well to render data I have used JSgrid which gives all the feature such as pagination,sorting etc.

Landing page

 Here, I will have all the task assign to me rendering and I can create the task ,by clicking on the uniqueKey it will take user to Task update page, where user can update comments and status

Update Task

Here user can update comments ,update task status,Re-assign to other user . All the data is stored in SOLR. 

Next ,is how to create a task.In the create task panel you have 

1. Task assign to field.
2. Watcher or you can say second look.
3. Priority is defined.
4. Environment 
5. Issue description.   

   

   Create Task

Happy Coding and keep Sharing !!!

Alchemy Chat Plugin For SDL WEB

This plugin is used to communicate with all CMS user as in group or one to one chat.I have used JQuery,WEB API and SOLR to store all the chat data.
By default it will load top 100 messages based on datetime in your chat window for both group and one to one chat,with the help of this plugin we can easily communicate with all CMS users without any problem,most of the time we face this problem when our client or editors are only accessible via emails not on chat.

To use this plugin we need to install SOLR

1. Download SOLR here .I have used SOLR version 6.5
2. Create core in SOLR
3. Update managed-Schema.xml and add following fields.
4. Re-Start :- solr start -p <portNumber>
5. Chat Plugin will load all the CMS users using coreservice.
6. In the group window your message will be visible to all CMS users.
7. In One2One only the participates. 

<field name="id" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" required="true" multiValued="false" />
<field name="Message" type="text_general" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false" multiValued="false" />
<field name="MessageId" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false" multiValued="false" />
<field name="User" type="text_general" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false" multiValued="false" />
<field name="TimeStamp" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false" multiValued="false" />
<field name="isPrivateChat" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false" multiValued="false" />
<field name="chatWith" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false" multiValued="false" />
<field name="privateChatID" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false" multiValued="true" />

Once all this is done install the plugin and start chatting with all the CMS users,or you can chat with any user one to one.

Install chat Plugin

Group chat with all CMS users.

Group chat data index in SOLR

One to one chat with CMS user.

One to One Chat

One to one chat data in SOLR

Happy Coding and keep sharing !!!!

Alchemy Plugin for WEB8 Dashboard

This is in continuation of my previous post where we build Alchemy plugin to download and search CMS items.I have further enhanced that one and added new feature as CMS level dashboard where we have multiple data points options and multiple chart options to represent the data in pictorial form.

Let's see the new addition in this Plugin DASHBOARD.
Dashboards often provide at-a-glance views.A data dashboard is an information management tool that visually tracks, analyzes and displays key performance using pictorial representation of the data , with the help of this dashboard we can identity the usage of different CMS items based on date using charts.

Here,We have 3 filters.

Dashboard

Let's  run this and see how its looks like with all the charts and information which represent .Let's generate charts based on All the components created month wise using all three charts.
1.Bar and Column Chart.

Bar and Column chart

 2.All three charts representing the number of content created month wise in pictorial form we can have same information available year wise as well.

All three charts.

3.Similar to components right we can generate information for pages for month and year wise.
4. Schema utilization number of components created using any particular schema

Schema utilization

With the help of all these information when can do CMS DB forecasting, CMS clean-up activity,Content growth.I have used Core Service,JQuery and Google visualization API to create dashboard.

Let's see the enhancement in the existing report Plugin.

1. Download button to export the search data in .csv format.
2. <a> link to open any item in the CMS to verify or cross check.
3. You can open any Item in same or new window.
4. Improved UI
5. JQuery searching to filter data

Anchor tag with UI improvement

Download and Data searching .

Happy coding and keep sharing !!!!

Alchemy plugin to download report from SDL WEB8

We all have came a across from a situation where we need to deploy/port CMS items from one environment to another for that we have Content porter but we need to manually identity(list of items which got created or modified after a certain date) items which we need to migrate.We used Bundle Schema to clubbed all the items at one location but that is again what if we missed any item and as a result content porting might failed due to some or the other dependency.

Here, is an Alchemy plugin which will allow you to download report from CMS based on date.I have used coreService,jQuery to build this plugin and a .ASPX page which is for popup.

This plugin will help you in migration as well where you need to identify items from across CMS.

Steps 

1.    Download the Developer pack from visual studio gallery Link.

2.    Alchemy version that I have used can be downloaded from Alchemy4Tridion link.

3.    Create a project selecting "Starter Plugin Project" template change the project name .

4.    Build the project and navigate to the generated .a4t file.

5.    Drag and drop the file in alchemy window.

Alchemy Plugin Installed.

Let go to CME,

Plugin is installed and ready for use

Let run the plugin and get some records form CM Database.

Custom Popup to Download data

Using Jquery Table searching you can filter the records as well. It will look for the text in all the columns.With the help of Jquery searching you can filter data based on date as well.

Search

You,can download the sample code from here

Happy coding and keep sharing !!!!

View ALL Structure Group and Pages name in CMS in English

In my current project we are using SDL WEB 8.1 and DXA 1.5 ,client come up with the new request and wants to read all the items in CMS in english only, In the current implementation we have multiple locales, changing the component title to english from other multilingual language title is not the big challenge but when its come to changing the SG and Page name to english for multilingual site is an issue, because we are using DXA default implementation to render Sitemap,Breadcrumb and Navigation.

Client Requirement:- Client wants to read name of all the items in CMS in english, for content editor point of view and at the same time we need to manage the Navigation,Sitemap and Breadcrumb for the multilingual website.

One solution is that,we write our own custom TBB and push the output ,but its a lengthy process and time taking as well.What I did is I made the changes in the existing TBB code and its working fine.

Let's have a look

1. Approach I followed.
2. Changes required in the existing TBB and in CMS.
3. How to debug the TBB.
4. How to upload the updated TBB in CMS.
5. And some Pre-requisites. 

Approach I followed:- I decide to create a common metadata schema and have linked component attached in it for both page and structure group and will read component value in the Generate Sitemap TBB, we can always made code tweaks in the existing one.,rather than creating new TBB.

Changes required in the existing TBB and in CMS:- Create a common Metadata schema and add link component field assign it to Structure group and Page.Update linked component field(s) value.Then, we need to update the existing SitemapItemData.cs model and add new property project name Sdl.Web.DataModel. Next is go to the GenerateSiteMap.cs file you will find this file in project Sdl.Web.Tridion.Templates and populate the value by reading the Metadata returned by the Tridion.ContentManager for StructureGroup and Page type.

How to debug the TBB:- There is a complete article available on SDL docx on how to debug the TBB.

How to upload the updated TBB:- You need to use TcmUploadAssembly.exe to upload the TBB this will ask you DLL source,CMS url,Item folder location(tcmID),userId and Password.I have created a batch file for this.

TBB Upload

Pre-Requisites:- To build the TBB code you are required to add reference of following DLLs.

1. Tridion.Common
2. Tridion.ContentManager
3. Tridion.ContentManager.Common
4. Tridion.ContentManager.Publishing
5. Tridion.ContentManager.Templating
6. Tridion.ExternalContentLibrary
7. Tridion.ExternalContentLibrary.V2
8. Tridion.Logging
9. Tridion.TopologyManager.Client
10. Microsoft.OData.Client

Once all the above changes are done you have successfully updated the TBB and added new field in Navigation.JSON ,now we need to update the code at CD side in DXA.

You need to update the following files in order to read the new field.

1. Update the Link Model at Sdl.Web.Common.Models
2. Update the SitemapItem Model at Sdl.Web.Common.Models both are available in DXA framework .
3. Now, we need to assign the value in the updated model go to CreateLink() method at Sdl.Web.Tridion Class name DefaultProvider.cs and assign the new property.
4. Build your code and Run.
5. Debug Breadcrumb.CHTML and TopNavigation.CHTML page you will have new field value in the model returned.

Happy Coding and Keep Sharing !!!

Generic Storage Extension Solution with ElasticSearch,MongoDB and SOLR

In my last couple of blogs we have discussed on how to extend storage capability of SDL WEB 8. Today we are going to create one common solution where we can decide out of the following which one we want to use as a extended storage medium by just updating the configuration file.This will give you the flexability to select the storage medium you wanted to enable.

1. Elastic Search
2. MongoDB
3. SOLR 
4. You can also use Custom DB.

Let's discuss what is storage extension?

Storage Extension :-Is the capability of using custom storage medium to store the data.When we publish the data it goes in to the BrokerDB or on FileSystem as per the setting but we can extend this functionality by using storage extension technique.

How we do that :-We need to override methods which published and un-published(create,update and remove) component presentation to the Broker DB and need to update the cd_storage_conf.xml file to inject your custom storage extension code.

High-Level GenericStorageExtension Architecture Diagram

You can download the sample code from here

Happy Coding and Keep Sharing !!!!