Armedia Blog

Have you ever wanted to impart information about a space, but without having to force the user to open a document, or perform a search?

A custom view is a portal that can be attached visually to a space. It is a great way to convey information about a space and it’s contents. A custom view can be attached to any space, but can be particularly effective when used on a company’s division, department or a specific project space.

The templates for Custom Views are found in:

Company Home > Data Dictionary > Presentation Templates

In this example, we are going to use a simple template called “readme.ftl” to convey information about a weekly status call for a fictitious “Phoenix” project.

The template files are <FreeMarker> templates. For more information on FreeMarker see:  http://freemarker.sourceforge.net/

For the purposes of this example, you don’t need to know anything about FreeMarker.
Use an editor of your choice and create a readme.html file. Here is what mine looks like:

<H1>Welcome to The Phoenix Project!</H1>
<p>
This is a reminder that we will have our weekly Status meeting tomorrow, <b>Wednesday April 1st, from 10:00 to 11:00 am</b>.  Please find tomorrow’s agenda, and this week’s reports (OWL, Kudos, & Events) in the <i>Weekly Meeting Materials</i> folder below.  The conference line information is listed below for all of our off-site colleagues:
<p>
<b>Call in #:  1 (888) 990-3160</b>
<br>
<b>Pass code: 39007728</b>
<p>
Thank you,
<br>
Sam Cooke
<br>
Program Assistant, Phoenix Project
<br>
(733)961-1990
<br>
sam.cooke@phoenix.com
<br>
<H4>Progressive Division of American Resource Management</H4>
<br>
The Phoenix Project
<br>
New Out of Old
<p>
<a href=”www.arm.com/phoenix”>www.arm.com/phoenix</a>

Once you are finished creating your readme.html file, import it into the space where you want the message to appear. Like so:

To select the template for your Custom View,  you will want to view the details of your space. Go up one level to the parent space and then select the View Details icon for your space. It’s the icon in the middle that looks like a sheet of paper. This is the View Details screen for our example space:

Once you are on the View Details screen, select the Modify Icon for Customer View. It’s the blue one just to the left of the trash can. Next select the readme.ftl  template like so:

Hit OK and then navigate to your space. Voila!, there is our meeting message. No need to email the information weekly any longer. Now it’s right there in Alfresco along with all the other project documentation. To update the information simply check out and update the readme.html file. When the file is checked back in, the view will automatically update with the new information.

This example is a very simple one. There are a number of presentation templates bundled with Alfresco, or you can create your own template.

Tags: Alfresco, Content Management

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 at 12:31 pm and is filed under Alfresco. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.