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Activity streams

An activity streamA series of chronologically-arranged notification messages is a series of chronologically-arranged notification messages describing activities within Ektron's Community Feature. See also: Sending notifications to a community.

For this kind of Web page

Use this

To see notifications for

.aspx

ActivityStream server controlA server control uses API language to interact with the CMS and Framework UI to display the output. A server control can be dragged and dropped onto a Web form and then modified.

The user or group identified in the page’s query string.

If none is identified, the logged-in user sees his or her own notifications.

PageBuilder

ActivityStream widget
See also: Using the ActivityStream widget on a PageBuilder page

Ektron Personalization

ActivityStream widget
See also: Using the ActivityStream widget on a PageBuilder page
  • Yourself
  • Your colleagues
  • Your community groups

Community Feature: your profile page

No action required—Activity Stream appears by default

Yourself

Community Feature: a colleague’s profile page

 No action required—Activity Stream appears by default

Colleagues

Community Feature: group profile page

 No action required—Activity Stream appears by default

Community group of which you are a member

Using the ActivityStream widget

The ActivityStream widget is installed with Ektron.

When you drag and drop an ActivityStream widget onto a Personalization page, it displays activities performed by

When you view another user’s personalization page containing this widget, the activities you see are controlled by that user’s Private Profile setting and whether that person is your colleague.

The following table describes when you can see another user’s Activity Stream.

If the user’s Private Profile setting is...

and the user is...

you can...
Public

a colleague

view the person's activities

Public

not a colleague

view the person's activities

Private

a colleague

view the person's activities

Private

not a colleague

only view the person's activities if you are an administrator

Colleague

a colleague

view the person's activities

Colleague

not a colleague

only view the person's activities if you are an administrator

If you can view another user’s activities, you see activities that person performs and activities that person's colleagues perform.

From this widget, you can filter the Activity Stream to view only activities from specific users and community groups. Filtering the ActivityStream widget means restricting notifications to those from selected users or groups. For example, you want to see only activities performed by Kay Milford. In the filter, select Kay Milford, and the ActivityStream widget shows messages only from her.

As another example, you are the head of the Engineering department and want to see your employees’ activities. To accomplish this, add them as colleagues. Then, in an ActivityStream widget, create a filter with their names. That widget only shows your employees’ activities.

If your department has a community group, you could add that group to the filter. Then, in addition to your employees’ activities, you would see the group’s activities.

This feature, combined with the ability to add multiple ActivityStream widgets to a page, lets you create separate activity streams that focus on people and groups of interest.

The following image shows 1 ActivityStream widget that displays a user’s colleagues (on the left), and 3 other widgets with filters that focus on individual users.

You could take this example one step further. If Leah Mathis and Scott Markey both work in “Sales & Marketing” and Bill Smith, Works in “Engineering,” you might only have 2 widgets, one for Scott and Leah and another for Bill.

Filtering the ActivityStream widget

  1. Click Filter at the bottom of the widget.
  2. In the Users and Groups box, enter the name of a user or community group by which to filter.
  3. Click Add. Only activities performed by the selected user or community group members appear.

    IMPORTANT: A valid name is one that exactly matches a user’s Display Name or community group’s Group Name. If your entry does not match, the widget refreshes and no filter is added.

    Also, the selected users or community groups appear in the widget’s filter area.

You can add as many users or community groups to the filter as you like, one at time. After you finish, you can hide the filter by clicking Hide.

Removing an entry from the ActivityStream widget filter

NOTE: If you remove all users and groups from the filter, the widget shows notifications from all users whose activities you can view.

  1. If you cannot see the filter’s users or community groups, click Filter at the bottom of the widget.
  2. Click Delete () next to the user or community group you want to remove. The ActivityStream widget refreshes, and the removed user or community group’s activities disappear from the stream.

Using the ActivityStream widget on a PageBuilder page

NOTE: To learn about Ektron's PageBuilder functionality, see Creating Web pages with PageBuilder.

When used on PageBuilder page, the ActivityStream widget shows the logged-in user’s activities by default. However, you can modify the widget to focus on another user’s or community group’s activities.

For example, you create a PageBuilder page about your company's CEO and want to display notifications about activities that the CEO, colleagues, and community groups perform on the site.

To accomplish this, add the ActivityStream widget to a “See what the CEO is Up To” page. While doing that, specify the user ID assigned to your CEO (available from the CEO's User Profile). Upon visiting the page, a user sees a list of the CEO’s activities.

To display another user’s or community group’s activities in the ActivityStream widget:

Prerequisite

The ID number of the user or community group whose notifications will appear

  1. Drag and drop the ActivityStream widget. The following dialog appears.

  2. Use the Feed Type drop-down to select User or Community Group.
  3. In the Object ID field, enter the user’s or community group’s ID.
  4. Click Save.

Sharing an activity stream event on your profile

Each activity in a stream has a Share link under its text.

When you click Share on someone's status, it appears in your profile's status, too.

Commenting on an activity stream event

Each activity in a stream has a Comment link under its text. When you click it, a Comment box opens for you to add a comment. When you finish, the comment link displays the number of comments on that activity. Users can click the number to view the comments.

Only the user who made the comment or a member of the Ektron Administrators group can delete the comment.

Setting up a time display for activity stream events

You can set up an activity stream to assign a time ago link to each event.

When a site visitor clicks that link, the activity stream event is launched in a new browser. From there, the site visitor can use the page's URL to uniquely identify the event. For example, the user can forward the URL to other users to notify them about the event.

To add a time ago link to a page:

  1. Create a Template Activity page. It must be an .aspx template with an activity stream server control that includes these properties.
    • ObjectType—enter Activity
    • DynamicObjectParameter—enter id
  2. Open the template that hosts the ActivityStream server control to which you want to add a time ago link.
  3. To the ActivityStream server control, add the TemplateActivity property. As the value for that property, enter the template page you created. That page appears when a site visitor clicks the time ago link.

    Here is an example of an Activity Stream server control with a sample value for that property.

    <CMS:ActivityStream ID="ActivityFeed1" 
  runat="server" EnablePaging="true" DynamicObjectParameter="id" 
  TemplateUserProfile="profile.aspx" TemplateActivity="activity.aspx" />

Displaying RSS feed links

Ektron provides the following RSSRich Site Summary; regularly changing content, such as news sites and blogs link and send content to subscribers. feed links that can display activity stream events.

You can use these feeds with Ektron's API to access and display status updates.

Troubleshooting activity streams

Problem. Notifications do not appear in my Activity Stream and the configurations are set for Notifications and User/Group Activities. Also, the Application Event log shows the following error: An exception occurred while enqueueing a message in the target queue. Error: 15404, State: 11, Could not obtain information about Windows NT group/user 'WIN-I2VJT0GQ8I2\Administrator', error code 0x534.

This occurs when the person who created the database is not the same person who created the queues. This creates permission issues when trying to write to the queue.

Solution. Do 1 of the following:

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