Dynamic Lists & the Mystery of the Missing New Item

A common misunderstanding/complaint about Dynamic Lists on SiteStudio websites is the mystery of the missing new item. An author creates a new item using the nifty "Create New Item" wizard and at the end of the wizard the author is prompted to edit or exit, and save. Once saved, the new item disappears into the ether, never to be seen again! Huh? What is going on here? Try again... same result! Meanwhile some sub-editor somewhere is getting deluged with Workflow notifications for duplicate items... help!

This situation is commonplace on systems that are using Workflow. The newly created item is whisked away to the appropriate Workflow where it cannot be searched for or accessed until it meets approval. To the author, it looks like their item has vanished into thin air because it doesn't turn up in the Dynamic List that they are trying to update. This is an unfortunate but correct behaviour of Dynamic Lists!

Dynamic Lists simply return a list of content items that match a search criteria. The trick here is that Workflow revisions are never included in search results. Most of the time users don't notice because the search service will find the latest approved revision of an item, so if their item is in Workflow but has an older approved revision, the search will find that older revision as the latest approved. The situation faced here is that there is no older approved revision - the new item is trapped in workflow at revision 1, there is no latest approved revision! It cannot be searched for and it will not show up in any Dynamic List. But the item does exist and it can be found - it is parked safely on the Workflow page.

Mystery solved? Yes. Makes the system usable? No! How do we solve this conundrum?

The first revision needs to skip Workflow so that it can turn up in search results. Sounds simple enough, except now every new content item in the system is getting released without approval! Fortunately SiteStudio has an ace up its sleeve. It uses the "DontShowInListsForWebsites" metadata field to prevent a released content item from showing up on a website.

So, the solution is to:

• Update the Dynamic List elements so that new items are created with their metadata preset to exclude them from the website;
• Update the Workflow so that the first revision of any item is immediately released only if it is excluded from a website.

Done! The new item can now be found in the Dynamic List as an "excluded" item and it doesn't show up on the website. All an author has to do is turn off the "exclude" rule and their item is instantly visible on the website. They can do so directly from the Dynamic List (there are buttons in the list element toolbar that toggle excluded items) or they can update the item's metadata as they save their changes.

Contribution Folders explained - in portuguese!

Andre has written a post similar to mine that explains how Contribution Folders work. Funny how people still seem to misunderstand the concept. Oh yeah, his post is in Portuguese (use the Google translate thingy.)

His post: http://andrealmar.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/contribution-folders-use-com-moderacao/
My post: http://webmonkeymagic.blogspot.com/2010/01/contribution-folders-same-same-but.html

It's important to note that they are virtual folders, so they may look like folders on your desktop but they work a bit differently. Also you are crazy to use them on a consumption website... lol I can say that because I worked on a site that did just that (it probably still does) and it made sense at the time but I wouldn't do it like that again.

I was recently asked in a series of emails to figure out how to display the user's folders as a site map. I tried valiantly to explain that a site map on a website is unrelated to contribution folders... they insisted they understood but wanted the solution anyway. Funny stuff.

Secrets of wcmFragment

The wcmFragment tag that came with SiteStudio10gR4 was a great new way to reference fragments. The big improvement with this tag is that the fragment no longer needs to leave any XML code in your pages. Here's an example of how to use it:
[!--$wcmFragment("myID","myContentId","myFragment",
     "mySnippet","myParameter=value")--]
However I've noticed a few documentation oddities regarding wcmFragment that were worth clarifying...

UCM 11g - out now!

Oracle finally released the new and improved UCM 11g! Yeah, I'm a bit slow on the announcement but that's because Australia was in bed last night when it was released. You can download it here but crikey, it's a big download! Looks like the WCM and just about everything else is bundled inside. Full documentation here.

From what I've seen there's no new killer features, all the work is under the hood. Faster checkins, better performance, login/logout authentication, integration with WebLogic. The downside is that all the performance improvements mean more grunt is needed from your hardware, but it hardly used much anyway.

I've already commented on the WCM improvements in my previous post but apparently the ability to drop SiteStudio editbale content into any non-SiteStudio website is a big ticket item (they're touting JDeveloper as their IDE of choice.) Also, DAM functionality is improved to better support flash objects, PSD files and selecting image renditions (previously renditions required a custom component to select them, I guess it's been rolled into the system.) The Desktop Integration Suite features are upgraded, good for users who rely on Contribution Folders.

Fortunately they've provided some info on how to upgrade from 10g so the question is, how long before we're all using 11g?

*** UPDATE: There does not appear to be a way to use UCM 11g without using WebLogic. This contradicts pre-release reports that said WebLogic was not compulsory. You should read this to understand it.

SiteStudio 11g preview

I've stumbled across the documentation for SiteStudio 11g on the Oracle website.

The documentation is more extensive than previous versions. It includes previously undocumented configuration flags, idoc script extensions and services, and custom element form APIs. Some nice gems in there.

It looks like the 10gR4 format for region definitions has become the standard, the 10gR3 and earlier versions are considered "legacy" format. Unfortunately 11g does not look like it will support other scripting languages, rumoured to include PHP, and the pre-existing support of ASP & JSP is still restricted to legacy sites.

In fact, it just looks like the very latest 10gR4 rebranded. But is this a good thing or bad thing? Content Server 11g will require WebLogic and other new infrastructure bits so maybe minimal tinkering to websites is a good idea for now. My favourite gripe, the LinkWizard has not been touched but at least the Contribution Window has dumped the tiny floppy disk icon for a big "Save" button.

The big change is the improved SSPU. Now called "Site Studio Publisher" it is a Content Server component and it can be accessed directly from the Content Server menus. It finally provides the ability to crawl and publish a specific page on demand, rather than the whole site - which contributors can do themselves, right from the page! It has a typical Content Server interface and can support specified custom querystrings in page URLs. It still supports post-crawl filters and post-publish triggers, but best of all, it appears to be compatible with 10gR3.

The SiteStudio documentation can be accessed here:
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/doc.1111/e10615/toc.htm