A collection is a list of content links offered to readers of a Web page. The following illustration shows a collection on a Web page.
You can use a collection to display any listing, such as job postings, press releases, and knowledge base articles. The following is a collection within Ektron’s Knowledge Base.
This section explains how to find, create, and manage collections. Your system administrator then creates or updates a Web page to display the collections using the Collection server control or Collection widget.
Every collection is assigned to a folder. You can find collections in the following ways.
To find collections in a folder:
The Content tab provides a Collections panel that displays all collections, regardless of their content folder.
To view all collections in all content folders:
If you have a large number of collections, use the screen's Search box to find one.
This section explains how to create a collection in a site that does not support multiple languages. To create collections in several languages, see Working with a Collection in a Multi-Language System.
Prerequisite: To create a collection, a user must have one of these criteria.
NOTE: Only users assigned to the Administrators group, Collection and Menu Admin role, Collection Approver, or Collection Admin role can work with Collections via the Collections tab. Users who do not belong to one of these groups can work with collections (if they have Collections permission for the collection’s folder) by selecting a folder then New > Collection or View > Collection.
To create a new collection, use one of these methods. The Add Collection screen appears.
Complete the screen using the following information.
Click Save when finished.
A collection’s folder appears on the Content > Collections > View All Collections screen, in the Path column. No value (\ ) indicates root folder.
After creating the collection, you would typically add content to it. See Creating a Collection and Creating a Collection.
To create new content while adding content links to a collection:
Alternatively, hover the cursor over the collection in the left panel, right click the mouse, and click Add Items.
NOTE: If your collection includes subfolders and you want to add the content to one of them, navigate to that subfolder. Otherwise, proceed to the next step.
NOTE: If you are using Ektron’s multi-language support, the content’s language appears next to the title. The language is derived from the collection’s language and cannot be changed.**
After creating a collection, you assign content to it as described in the following steps.
NOTE: When viewing a Collection on the Web site, a site visitor sees last published version of content. If it was never published, nothing appears.
Alternatively, hover the cursor over the collection in the left panel, right click the mouse, and click Add Items.
As another alternative, navigate to a content folder, click items to be assigned, right click the mouse and select Copy. Then, locate the collection, right click the mouse, and select Paste Items to Collection.
NOTE: The file types pulldown remembers your most recent choice and can filter which files appear. You can change the selection if desired.
You can specify a template that determines the screen display for a collection when it is published on a Web page. You also can disable the template and, instead, use quicklinks to determine the page template. (See Also: Viewing Quicklinks or Forms)
The following example shows links using Quicklinks. Notice that content uses several templates. As a result, when a user clicks content in the collection, the screen information around the content is determined by its template.
The following example show links when you use a template named index.asp
.
NOTE: If a collection item is a form, ekfrm is used instead of id to denote form block .
To toggle between a default template and Quicklinks:
To edit information about a collection:
NOTE: Prerequisite: To create a collection, a user must have one of these criteria. lists permissions required to edit a collection.
To remove content from a collection:
NOTE: Prerequisite: To create a collection, a user must have one of these criteria. lists permissions required to remove content from a collection.
Alternatively, hover the cursor over the Collection, right click the mouse, and click Remove Items.
To delete a collection:
NOTE: Prerequisite: To create a collection, a user must have one of these criteria. lists permissions required to delete a collection.
Alternatively, hover the cursor over the Collection, right click the mouse, and click Delete collection name.
If this collection requires approval, and the user who is deleting cannot approve changes, the following occurs. See Also: Setting Up Collection Approval
NOTE: Any user with permission to edit a collection can perform the undo function until the content is approved
After a collection is created, and more than one content item is assigned to it, you can reorder a collection list as described in the following steps.
NOTE: Prerequisite: To create a collection, a user must have one of these criteria. lists permissions required to reorder a collection.
Alternatively, hover the cursor over the Collection, right click the mouse, and click Reorder Item.
In a multi-language Ektron system, you can create a language-specific edition of each collection. When a site visitor selects a language, then navigates to a page with a collection, Ektron displays the collection in the selected language if available. If not, Ektron displays nothing.
NOTE: Notice the contrast between the collections and content: if a collection is not available in a selected language, nothing appears. However, if content is not available in the selected language, content in the other languages may appear.
IMPORTANT: You can only add content in the language of a collection. So, create content first, then create a collection that links to it.
When you create a collection for a foreign language, decide from the following:
If you require a collection to be approved, only the following users have permission to create or edit a collection and can approve a change to a collection.
You can set up an approval system for any collection. As with a content approval chain, you specify users to approve changes to a collection before it can be published.
Only administrators or users to whom the folder-admin role has been assigned see the Approval is Required checkbox on the Add and Edit Collection screens.
Whenever anyone changes a collection that requires approval (by adding or removing content items), the toolbar on the View Collection Screen changes, as shown below.
By default, you only see approved collection items. To see unapproved items, click View Stage.
After changing a collection's contents, if a user has permission to edit collections but not approve changes, he sees the following toolbar.
That user should click Submit (). This action triggers an email notification to all approval users for the collection. It also changes the collection’s status to checked out. No other users can edit it in this status.
A user with permission to approve changes sees the toolbar below after clicking View Stage.
If the user clicks Publish (), the new version of the collection is published to your Web site.
Any user with permission to edit a collection can go to the screen and click Undo Checkout () any time before the approval. In this case, the submitted changes are deleted, and the collection reverts to its original state.