Table of contents | Next | Previous

Overview of key new features in IBM Lotus Web Content Management 6.1

IBM Lotus Web Content Management v6.0 was released and generally announced in June of 2006.  With the introduction of v6.0, Lotus Web Content Management received many new and significant enhancements that added to its capability as an enterprise content management system (CMS) and introduced further levels of scalability and reliability.

Today, Lotus Web Content Management v6.1 has built upon these areas further to deliver an enterprise scalable CMS capable of meeting both business and technical requirements. Version 6.1 has introduced new product enhancements in many significant areas across the platform including Administration, Authoring and management of content, Rendering, Security, Workflow, APIs and many others. The following information explores key new additions to the platform and the benefits gained through their use and implementation.

Administration

• Library tasks:  Version 6.1 enhances the management and administration of Lotus Web Content Management libraries by providing additional deletion and reporting capabilities along with a streamlined interface. Some of these enhancements are shown in the figure below.

User experience: Authoring and content management

• Inline editing: Building upon the exposure to inline editing in v6.0, more sophisticated tasks can now be exposed to consumers of the Web site to allow for in context editing. With these new additions, consumers can interact with the Web site in multiple ways while streamlining the processes. The new actions include move, view versions, view content history, and the ability to populate fields during the creation process.

• User security selection process: The process of adding user access rights to objects within Lotus Web Content Management has been streamlined and brought inline with the model that is used within other areas of the portal.  A new inheritance model has been introduced to reduce the work required to implement secure content access control.
  
  

• Image selection: The image component has been enhanced to provide a simpler interface that allowing for easier location and placement of the image.
  
  

• Improved table support in the Rich Text Editor: Substantial improvements have been made for table support in Lotus Web Content Management to support control of headers, styles, and colors.
  
  

• Authoring template enhancements: Version 6.1 has introduced further levels of simplification options to the authoring template. The new enhancements mean that administrators have an additional degree of customization over v6.0 to allow content authors visibility of buttons, toolbars, and fields during the authoring process. Field labels can now be replaced with appropriate words of your choosing.
  
  
  Authoring templates can control versioning on a template-by-template basis.
  
  
  
  In addition, options include site area creation when a specific template is used.
  
  

• New paging component:  With the ever increasing level of information on a Web site, it is important to have options when navigating and displaying content.  The new enhancements bring page control and display features to your site with ease.
  
  
  The "Page size options” allows a user to dynamically change the number of results shown in a page
  (From a set of defined page sizes). E.g.
  

• Active filtering within the Rich Text Editor: There is now an alternative to removing the HTML script button from the content authors Rich Text Editor experience. With v6.1, you can actively filter unwanted HTML fragments from HTML elements within the Rich Text Editor. The option is configured on an individual Rich Text Editor component basis and switched on by setting the active.content.filtering.enable variable to true in the WCMConfigService.properties file in thewas_profile_root/PortalServer/wcm/shared/app/config/wcmservices/ directory

Syndication

• Reporting:  Syndicator and Subscriber pages now detail the status of the last syndication event. Details about the number of updates and any errors are now reported inline with the syndicator/subscriber configuration.
  

Rendering

• Format tags:  Version 6.0 introduced a format tag that can be applied to a component when rendered. An example of this is where a component references an image (for example, Component name="img1") and you opt to have it render as a URL by applying the format tag (for example, Component name="img1" format=url"). Version 6.1 has expanded upon the available format tags to include the following tags and their options.
  
• File resource component
  • format=“FILENAME”: This tag renders the file name of the file held in the component.
  • format=“SIZE_MB | SIZE_KB | SIZE_BYTES”: This tag renders the size of the embedded file with the appropriate supplied metric.
  • format=“SIZE”: This tag renders the size of the embedded file with an appropriate metric. For example, < 1K renders in bytes “2 bytes”.
  • format=“MIMETYPE”: This tag renders the mime type of the embedded resource determined by the file extension and the "extensiontype" entries supplied in the  WCMConfigServices.properties file.

 

• Dates (for tags that render dates)

• format=“RELATIVE”: This tag renders a date string that is relative to the current time (for example, “Yesterday at 4:10pm
• format=“DATE_TIME_SHORT | DATE_TIME_MEDIUM | DATE_TIME_LONG | DATE_TIME_FULL”: This tag renders the date and time for the given generic format. For example format= “DATE_TIME_MEDIUM” outputs April 15, 1971 12:46:47 PM.
• format=“DATE_SHORT | DATE_MEDIUM | DATE_LONG | DATE_FULL”: This tag renders the date for the given generic format.
• format=“TIME_SHORT | TIME_MEDIUM | TIME_LONG | TIME_FULL”: This tag renders the time for the given generic format.

 

• Names
  The format tag attribute can be used to render any attribute from the LDAP. For example, format=“DN” renders the distinguished name for the user.
• Image resource component (all the files resource component formats)
• Formats for all of the fields in the UI (BORDER, WIDTH, HEIGHT, ALT, NAME, ATTRIBUTES)
  • format = “BASEWIDTH | BASEHEIGHT”: The original width and height of the image if it was automatically calculated by the system on save.

   

• History Component Dates
• field=“creation”: Renders the creation date for the targeted item
• field=“creator”: Renders the user that created the targeted item
• field=“lastmodifier”: Renders the last user to modify the targeted item
• ID Component
  field=“ID”: Renders the UUID of the targeted item
• User name tags
  awareness=“true | false”: Renders a VCARD for each user rendered by the tag
• ID, Security, Profile and Workflow Components
  ifempty=“(you do not have access please contact abc@ibm.com)”: Renders the value of the “ifempty” tag attribute if the selected field does not render anything
• ID, Profile and Text, Short Text Component/Elements
  Setting htmlencode=“true | false”: Encodes all the text that is being rendered

 

Programmability (APIs)

• Custom Workflow Actions : Custom Workflow Actions allow for code to be invoked as part of the Lotus Web Content Management workflow process.  This enhancement opens up the workflow to allow the introduction of a step or steps where specific tasks must occur. An example of this might be appropriate where a custom notification action is needed or where manipulation of an image size item must occur before publishing.
• Dynamic approvers: The method "com.ibm.workplace.wcm.api.Content" has been extended to allow for the approvers to be changed, added, removed, or access checked.
• Library service:  The library service can now be manipulated.  Service APIs have been exposed to allow for libraries to be created, saved, copied, exported, or imported.
• Syndication:  The syndication API has been exposed to allow for dynamic and finer control of the syndication process through custom code.  The addition of this API allows for custom applications to be created. Specific syndication tasks, such as scheduling, reporting, or monitoring, can be achieved.  The following main functions are exposed:
  • Enable and disable syndicators and subscribers
  • Start full and partial updates
  • Dynamically check syndication updates to see their current status
  • View syndicator or subscriber details (name, libraries being syndicated)
  • Query for the last syndication run's detail (items updated, saved, modified, removed)

This article highlights the key new features in Lotus Web Content Management 6.1