6.0
Product Whitepaper
Copyright and Proprietary Information
Š Digimaker™ 2007. This user guide constitutes proprietary information of Digimaker. No part of this user guide may be reproduced, transmitted, transcribed, stored in a retrieval system or translated into any language in any form, by any means, without the written permission of Digimaker.
Digimaker reserves the right to make changes in this user guide at any time and without notice. Digimaker makes no warranties, express or implied, in this user guide. In no event shall Digimaker be liable for any indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages arising out of purchase or use of this user guide or the information contained herein.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENT Digimaker Software requires the following software in addition to Digimaker
Hardware Web-server - Computer and processor PC with a 550 MHz processor required; 2 GHz or faster processor recommended. 256Mb or more memory. 150MB free-space Hard disk required; 300MB free-space or more recommended. Database-server - Computer and processor PC with a 550 MHz processor required; 2 GHz or faster processor recommended. Memory 512MB or more. Hard disk 200MB free-space required; 500MB freespace or more recommended.
Software Operating System – Microsoft Windows XP or Windows 2003 sever with latest service packs Web Server – IIS 5.1 or 6.0 with latest service packs Components – Microsoft .NET framework 2.0 with latest service packs A fully operational SMTP server Web Services Enhancements 2.0 SP2 TidyATL v.1.0 or above Web Browser – IE 6.0 or above
Database Microsoft SQL Server 2000 or 2005 with full text search installed along with latest service packs
Special hardware or software requirement Reports module – Browser hawk 7.0.2 or above Microsoft office integration – MS Office 2003
Development Environment To develop templates using the SiteBuilder SDK, use one of the following: • Your favorite text editor • Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 • Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition
TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW Main building blocks The main technology building block looks as below:
Why .Net? Digimaker choose to base its new platform on the .Net platform. There are many reasons behind this. A few of these reasons is listed below: Improved Reliability The .NET Framework takes the core achievements originally made in Windows 2000 and brings them to new levels. With advanced ways of monitoring the health of running applications, as well as isolating applications from each other, applications built using the .NET Framework stay up-and-running longer than ever before. Increased Performance Thanks in part to advanced compilation and caching techniques, server applications have never been faster than with the .NET Framework and its ASP.NET technology. Customers who have moved from ASP to ASP.NET are seeing significant increases in speed on the order of 300- to 500-percent improvements.
Faster and easy deployment The .NET Framework makes it easy to deploy, run, and manage applications. Application isolation and automatic version control of components can help prevent versioning conflicts. Applications built using the .NET Framework can be deployed to a client or server machine simply by copying the application directory to the target machine—no registration is required. With No-Touch Deployment, Windows based smart client applications can also now be deployed to and updated on target PCs simply by copying the necessary components to a Web server that can be accessed by your end users. Powerful, Granular Security The code access security technology in the .NET Framework was designed for today's Internet environments. The .NET Framework can collect evidence about the origin and author of an application. The .NET Framework run-time environment can then combine that evidence with administrator-set or default security policies to make fine-grained decisions about whether to run that application or enable it to access a particular resource. It can even "negotiate" with the application, for example, denying it the permission to write to a protected directory and enabling the application to choose whether it will run, given that it has been denied that permission. Integration with Existing Systems The COM interop technology in the .NET Framework generates a wrapper around your existing COM components and Windows based applications (such as Microsoft Office), enabling you to program against them as though they were originally written using the .NET Framework. Applications built using the .NET Framework can connect with existing systems and packaged applications—regardless of their underlying platform. Mobility Support The .NET Framework provides one unified programming model for developing smart client and Web applications for both PCs and mobile devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones. Native XML Web Service Support The .NET Framework was designed from the ground up to support XML Web services, a model for crossplatform, distributed computing based on standard protocols such as XML, SOAP, and HTTP. Web services can be used to integrate applications running on different platforms, or to offer software as a service. With the .NET Framework, an application can be transformed into a Web service with just one simple line of code. Flexible Content Access & Scalability The .NET Framework technology for interacting with data, ADO.NET, is designed for today's Web-based style of data access. Using ADO.NET, developers have the option of working with a platform-neutral, XML-based cache of the requested data, instead of directly manipulating the database. This approach to data access frees up database connections and results in significantly greater scalability.
Web services Web Services provide a simplified mechanism to connect applications regardless of the technology or devices they use, or their location. They are based on industry standard protocols with universal vendor support that can leverage the internet for low cost communications, as well as other transport mechanisms. The loosely coupled messaging approach supports multiple connectivity and information sharing scenarios via services that are self describing and can be automatically discovered. Benefits of using Webservices: 1. A simplified mechanism to connect applications regardless of the technology or devices they use, or their location. Applications running anywhere, on any technology or device will have a Web Services capability available to them. As such, the applications of customers and business partners will be able to participate in an organizations business process, in real time. 2. Based on Industry Standard Protocols with universal support 3. Leverages the Internet for low cost communications 4. Loosely Coupled, Previous connectivity approaches required the same technology at each end of the wire. For example, even though EAI adaptors enabled different applications to connect to each other, it still required the same proprietary EAI technology as a wrapper around each application. Focusing on XML protocols, Web Services describe the connection, not the technology at either end. Loose coupling is not just a technology issue however, but a key aspect of service design 5. Supports multiple connectivity and information sharing scenario 6. Self Describing, The time taken for developers to properly understand how to use an existing interface – particularly when it is external to their own projects – slows down the time that new connections can be established. Web Services provides a much richer specification of the service compared to previous technologies, which can be accessed programmatically.
PRODUCT ARCHITECTURE Layers The following diagram describes the detailed architectural view of Digimaker 6.0 platform.
A simple view of the layers of Digimaker 6.0 is shown in diagram below:
Data Access Layer It is known that the most critical component in the development of an enterprise system is the DAL, and that the success of the whole system depends on it: the ability to adapt to changes, as well as the performances, depend, again, on the DAL. Notice also that the DAL intrinsically possesses the property of preventing errors, or at least of reducing their impact on the system. Also, security depends in large part on the DAL - see for instance the problem of SQL tampering. The underlying concept of this project is that activities such as transaction management, caching, connection management, tracing, execution plan monitoring, should be managed automatically by the DAL classes. Hence, developer should focus only on the solution of functional problems. In such a context, development time will be drastically reduced, and the quality of the entire system is expected to be high. Digimaker is a content management system where its primary role is to organize data and make sure that all resources are present at any time so the user may get any version of an asset. Data in Digimaker comes from multiple locations and is of unpredictable nature and structure. We are talking about office documents, pictures in different formats and sizes, HTML pages, XML files, or RSS feeds from external websites.
The Data Access Layer is the interface for adding, deleting, modifying and retrieving these assets. The main goal for this module is to hide the storage details for the client. The Data Access Layer must support security, transactions, concurrency integrity and error handling.
It must be flexible and easy to do changes to existing types and easy to add new. We will use ADO.NET datasets to hold/manipulate data. Each dataset needs procedures for CRUD functionality. We should use code generation to create the classes that setup the stored procedures and assembles these into an object that operates on a dataset. The base logic must be so generic that we don’t need to change it when new strongly typed datasets are appended to the system.
Data types We see data as two main types: binary data and structured data.
Binary data is word documents, html pages, images and other asset types that we threat as blob objects. The only way to compare two binary data object is to compare them byte by byte. For every data object we may add some Meta information that may describe the content. Digimaker will have two supported data structures for accessing Meta information about an item; Topic Maps and Dublin Core Metadata. Structured data is XML documents/objects. They may have a schema so the document can be validated (and edited). If a schema is present we can also assign one or multiple views (XSLT) to display the data.
Digimaker Structured Data are objects that the Digimaker application is built upon. For example: • • •
Person Picture Document
For these objects we can generate strongly typed datasets that can be used in the application. These objects are defined by an XML schema (XSD). For example: • • •
PersonData.xsd PictureData.xsd DocumentData.xsd
Data Acc cess Methods s Informatio on about the application a is stored in a da atabase. We uses stored procedures p to o interact with h the data store ed there. We use a connecctionless arch hitecture when n talking to the database. This T way the database will scale bettter. Using Dattasets makes s it easy for the Digimaker system s to sca ale. Traditiona ally it has bee en a problem to scale data abase servers s. Even thoug gh there are different d solutiions available e to do that, all a are time consuming and costly. By using Dattasets, we can have a third d server betw ween database e and applica ation server to access a the ca ached datase ets and thus scaling the loa ad much bette er. The follow wing Diagram shows the prrocess:
Business s Layer Business layer contains the businesss rules for diffferent modu ules of Digima aker. Only the e libraries defiined within the business lay yer is allowed to call the DA AL. Digimaker decided to implement this due to follow wing benefits: •
Centralizes business rules into C i a compon nent that is ea asy to create,, use, and re--use. This ma akes de evelopment and a maintenance easier.
•
age in which to develop bu usiness rules.. Provides a high-level langua
•
Centralizes the C e business log gic into comp ponents. This means less repeated r code e throughout your y ap pplication; ea ach form that needs n to do a specific taskk always usess the same co omponent.
•
Centralized bu C usiness logic routines r help with maintenance, since changes c to an ny routine nee ed be m made only onc ce.
•
As we are usin A ng typed datasets in Digimaker, we get the benefit off looking up co olumn namess ussing IntelliSen nse instead of o having to re emember them m. Also, chan nges to a type ed dataset will give th he developer an early compile-time erro or rather than an unsuspeccted runtime error. e
•
onents onto different d physiical machiness at any time. This Provides the flexibility to separate compo elps with scallability and be etter centralizzation of code e. he
Main modules of Digimaker system The modules in Digimaker can be divided into following major categories: Content Corporate Structure Small Application Builder Roles
The diagram on the next page (also shown to the right) shows the components of the Digimaker system. The Content module deals with the different kinds of content that Digimaker supports, such as articles, documents, links, pictures and structure. The Small Application Builder enables form based collection and storage of structured data. This data can then be filtered by different presented by graphs and exported for other use. This component adds flexibility of working with user defined data, and the user is not limited built-in types of content.
E-Forms
Roles Module (Implements Access Control and Security)
1. 2. 3. 4.
CorporateStructure
main SiteStructureModule
LinksModule
Document Module
site
views, the to the
PictureModule
The Corporate Structure contains information regarding organizational and the people in the system. The user control is also done from this module.
units Article Module
The Roles module affects all other modules. It implements role based access control on all the different objects within Digimaker. A role can be given different levels of access to objects in the Digimaker. E.g. in case of the site structure, the following levels of access can be provided: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Browse articles; relate articles to other content and other basic operations. Write articles for draft or approval Write and publish articles directly Full article management
Product’s security feature On a database level all stored procedures are encrypted. We use only stored procedures to access the database. All passwords in the database are stored with an MD5 Hash and Salt. Connection strings in config files are all stored in encrypted format. -Our authentication mechanism is based on the Provider Model Architecture from the .NET Framework. Users are stored in the database, but it is also possible to authenticate towards Active Directory if you wish to do so. We use cookies for maintaining user status, and the life of the cookies can be controlled by the configuration files. -Access to our software is purely role-based. The roles are user-defined and there are no limits to how many roles you can create. -When Digimaker is installed it communicates with our Licensing server to validate if the installed copy is running on a legal license. There is also a certificate that will be installed on the server that has to be validated before any code will be executed
LOGGING INTO THE SYSTEM You log in to the system by entering your assigned user name and password. Depending on the role that you have been assigned you will have access to those features that is appropriate to your privilege level. The login page and the way you log in is the same regardless of role. The login page is accessed by appending the site URL (website address) with ‘/digimaker’. For example http://demo.digimaker.com/digimaker
MAIN INTERFACE The Digimaker CMS provides many options to manage web site content. Various features and functions will be discussed throughout the document.
CONTENT The Content menu allows you to create and manage menu items and article content on your website.
New menu item The system gives you the freedom to alter or create menu/navigation items. How a menu item is presented on your web pages depends on the design template you choose for that menu item.
Upon choosing to create a new menu item you shall get the below screen. Properties
Menu item name is the name of the navigation/menu item. This is the name users will see in the site navigation. Select Menu item placement If you did not enter the Add new menu item workspace by choosing a menu item in Web Site Structure and then selecting Add new menu item, you will have to define where this new menu item shall be placed in the navigation structure. Mouseover tool tip allows you to specify the text that will show when the user hovers the cursor over the menu item. Metakeywords allows you to enter keywords that describe the article, for example: Car, Washed or Shiny. These keywords help facilitate Internet search engines such as Alta Vista or Google classify your article in their search index. Metadescription allows you to enter a description that describes the article, for example: My car is washed and shiny. This description helps facilitate Internet search engines such as Alta Vista or Google classify your article in their search index Alias is a unique name associated with an article. This is used by the site builders to refer to article as an alternative to the article ID (generated by default). Picture for menu item Here you can relate an image to the menu item. Where this image is displayed is defined in the design template. Menu item type allows you to define the functionality of the menu item. Menu choice for articles is a normal menu item that will be shown in site navigation on the live site. Container item contains a set of menu items groups. Example; if you have both intranet and internet in Digimaker you may have separate containers holding the Web Site Structures of each of them. Invisible menu item – an invisible menu item may contain published articles, but the menu item itself will not be visible in the live navigation structure. URL menu item – a menu item that contains an URL. An URL menu item cannot contain articles Move articles define where the articles in this menu item shall be moved after a certain date/time. Example; you may want all articles to move to a menu item for Old articles after 10 days. When defines when the articles in the menu item shall be moved. Order articles in menu item by allows you to decide what criteria the articles are sorted by when they are listed. You can choose between: Date – Newest first Articles are sorted by date, the most recent are shown first Date – Oldest first Articles are sorted by date, and the oldest are shown first. Priority 1 Articles are sorted by priority; priorities closest to 1 are listed first. Design template allows you to choose what design template to use. The design template decides which page design to use for the new menu item. Target window allows you to define how the page is to be opened by the browser when the link is clicked. When linking to other items, either on your own website or on external websites, you need to control how those items are displayed in the browser. For example, when linking to external content it is usual to 'pop-up' a new browser window to display the item in. When users click on web links you can control the behavior of the browser window using the target parameter. Show date allows you to specify a date and time when you want the menu choice to appear in the navigation. Expire date allows you to specify a date and time when you want the menu choice to disappear from the navigation. Link allows you to insert the URL you want the menu item to link to. Relations Here you can choose to relate various information and functions to a menu item. Note that this is optional and does not have to be done in order to create the menu item. We shall look into various relations later.
New Article
When you select to create a new article the following screen opens Content
Headline allows you to enter the article’s title or headline. Article Abstract is a brief summary or synopsis of the article. Full story is where the main content of the article can be typed. You can format the text, insert images or make references to links, documents or other internal articles. The WYSIWYG toolbar facilitates this process. Article Placement allows you to place the article in a location in the Digimaker hierarchy. You can save an article as Draft, For approval or a Published article. Properties Allows you to add various properties to the article such as author and meta-keywords. You can also prepublish content using the 'show date' field. This enables you to ensure articles are published on the site automatically based on a date trigger. You can also archive articles automatically using this feature.
Author allows you to enter your name or the name of the person you wish to identify as the author of the article. To quickly enter your own name as the author, click on Insert your name. To quickly insert your email, click Insert your email Meta keywords are keywords that describe the article. For example, Car, Washed or Shiny are automobile specific keywords. These keywords are used by internet search engines such as AltaVista or Google to classify your article in their search index. Meta description is a description of the content of an article. For example: My car is washed and shiny. This description helps facilitate Internet search engines such as Alta Vista or Google classify your article in their search index Alias is a unique name associated with an article. This is used by the site builders to refer to article as an alternative to the article ID (generated by default). Priority allows you to set the priority listing of the article using numbers starting from 1. This enables you to exercise control over article positioning. By default the Priority is set to 1. Articles can be sorted in ascending or descending priority order. The sorting options are part of the menu group’s properties. Show date allows you to specify a date and time for the article to be published on your web site. The default Show date is set to the current system date and time. Use the Choose Date button to choose a date and the drop-down list to choose the time.
Expire date is the date and time when the article will be automatically removed from the site and archived. If you do not select an expiry date, the article stays published until it is removed manually. Relations The Relations tab allows you to relate various information and functions to an article.
Preview The preview tab gives you the ability to preview how your article will appear on the website after publication.
History Each time an article is updated, a new version is created. You can retrieve these old versions and republish them at any stage by using the Rollback function.
Comments The Comments Tab is a new addition to the article detail page and provides the functionality to add comments to an article.
CALENDAR A calendar helps you organize your time by scheduling it. You can create events, organize meetings, schedule resources. You can also change the look of your calendar by choosing from the different formats to suit your personal taste and requirement
Add Calendars Add Calendars creates a new calendar. Position the mouse over Calendars under the Content Submenu bar to access the Calendars menu. Click Add calendar to add a new calendar.
Calendar name is the name of the calendar that you want to add/create. The Visibility feature allows you to set the permissions or access rights to your calendar. There are three types of visibility mode: Visibility Description Public A calendar that is visible and accessible to everyone. Private A calendar that is visible and accessible only to those with permissions. Protected A calendar that is visible to everyone but accessible only to those with permissions. Set the permissions for each role in your organization using the radio buttons Permissions Description Browse You can only view calendar and events. You cannot edit or add an event Contribute You can view all calendars and events, but you can manage only those events owned by you. You cannot manage events owned by others. Manage You have full access rights to view all calendars, add new events and manage all events including those events that are created by others.
CAMPAIGNS Campaigns are used to send out newsletters or any literature about the company by e-mail to a selected group of clients, suppliers or partners.
Create New Campaign Position the mouse over Campaign under the Content Submenu bar to access the Campaign menu. Click Add new Mail Campaign to add a new Campaign.
Before you create a new campaign make sure that the following are available: A view in Digimaker containing the e-mail addresses of the targets. A design template file and an article list template file A content group containing articles There are four tabs associated with the Create new Campaign Workspace: Campaign properties is where you set campaign properties such as create a target group, setting the time interval to send the campaign to the target group, set the number of articles, and define the template that should be used. Campaign text is where you design the article that needs to be used by the campaign. Campaign history contains the history of the campaigns such as date of creation/modification of campaign, number of users, responses and status of the sent campaign. Campaign advanced properties is where advanced properties are the mail server details.
List Campaigns Click on the campaign name to display the details of a campaign. If the campaign that you want is not displayed in the list, you can find the campaign using the search feature.
The following search criteria can be applied: If you do an empty search, all the campaigns are listed. Click on the campaign name to view the details. If you know the name of the campaign or part of the name, then type it in the text box and click Search. A list of all the campaigns that match the specified criteria is displayed. If you want to narrow down your search to a specific category, choose between the two criteria – All Campaign Types, Mail Campaign and click Search. A list of all the campaigns that match the criteria is displayed.
RSS FEEDS RSS Feeds are used to retrieve RSS Feeds from various sources and allows you to publish them as articles on your website.
Add New Feed To register a new RSS Feed, select Add new.
The Add new Feed Workspace is divided into two sections – General Properties and Retrieval Properties. General Properties This section contains the following fields: Feed name is the name of the Feed from where the news is to be retrieved.
URL is where you should enter URL for the RSS Feed. Make sure that the RSS Feed confirms to the format that Digimaker recognizes. Placement is the location where the RSS Feed is be placed in. Publishing security specifies how to publish the articles. You can choose between two ways of publishing – manually and automatically Publish in these menu items is the location where the articles from the RSS Feed should be published to. ”Read More” – text is the text displayed to lead the reader for a more detailed section of the news article. Example of ”Read More” texts are: ”Read more”, ”Click here”, ”more”, ”here”. Retrieval Properties This section contains fields that provide retrieval information. Retrieval interval is Time interval (in minutes) that the RSS Feed needs to be updated. Source Signature is source of the RSS Feed article. The source can be an image when the RSS Feed provides an image, the name of the source or no signature. Old news specifies how to handle old articles. You have three choices – Archive, Delete, and No delete/archive. If you choose archive or Delete, you need to specify number of days in the older than drop-down list.
List Feeds List Feeds will lists all the Feeds registered in the system.
Feed name is the name of the RSS feed from where the articles are published. To view the list of news collected by the Feed, click on the name of the Feed or select View from the pop-up menu. The window opens in the view mode by default. If you click on the downward arrow in the Feed name a pop-up menu is displayed. It offers the following choices: View displays the list of news collected by the Feed. Edit displays the properties of the Feed in the edit mode Delete removes a Feed. Feed Type is the format of the RSS Feed. Last Updated displays the time and the date the RSS Feed was added.
If you want to publish any of the articles on the list to your website, select the check box and click Save. The article is saved in the location; the current Feed has been assigned. General displays Feed properties. You can edit the properties. Click Save after you are done with the changes.
List All Categories Displays a list of all RSS Feed categories.
Move the mouse on the category name and click on the downward arrow. A pop-up menu with the following three options is displayed: List Feeds displays all the RSS Feeds added to the category.
Edit displays the category window where you can edit the name of the category and change the location of the category. If you click on the security tab you can change the access permission. Delete will remove the category.
Add Category The Add category button creates a new category for RSS Feed.
Properties is where you provide the general information about the category that you want to add. Category name is the name of the category. Category Placement is the location where the category is going to stored. Click Change placement and select the category under which you want to store this category. Security is where the access rights are set for the users/roles. There are two kinds of access rights: Permissions Description Browse You can only view calendar and events. You cannot edit or add an event Manage You have full access rights to view all calendars, add new events and manage all events including those events that are created by others.
LIBRARY This section we will learn in details about options available under the Library Menu. The Library Menu allows you to add and manage various kinds of assets in Digimaker. Through the library, you can add and manage images, documents links and banner within Digimaker.
Image Management Using images enhances the look of your website. A good choice of graphics and interesting pictures will make your site not only interesting but also easy to use. To use images in a Digimaker site you first have to upload them to into the Digimaker administration interface. This adds the images to the Digimaker file system. After an image has been uploaded it can be used on the website in a variety of ways.
Select Library from the Main Menu Tab. This displays the Library Workspace. In the Library Explorer navigate to images and click on an image category. You will be able to see all the images under the chosen category as thumbnails in the Workspace.
Delete image Click the icon to delete an image. To delete several images at a time, choose the image by marking the check box under the thumbnail and then click Delete selected. Edit image Click the icon to enter the image editing window.
Document Management In order for you to be able to show documents on your website, you first have to upload the document to Digimaker. Typical document formats include Microsoft Word, Excel, Power Point, Adobe PDF etc.
Banner Management A banner is an advertisement displayed on specific pages of your site. Banners can be configured to appear only during a specific time period. Digimaker also gives you the functionality to track the number of times a banner has been clicked on.
Banner settings Banner name allows us to enter a name for the banner. Banner type let you chose the format of the banner. A banner can be an image, flash or html file. Choose the format of the banner from the drop-down list. By default, Image is selected. Select image allows you choose between uploading a new image, or search for an image already uploaded. If you want to remove selected images, click on the Remove button. Select Category allows you place the banner in a category by clicking on the select category button and choosing an appropriate location for the banner. This will help you group related banners apart from maintaining directory structure. Banner link is the URL of the web page the users will be sent to when they click on the banner. You can also specify the target for the new link (new browser window, same browser window etc). Use the Search button to locate a link already defined in the link library. Banner will be removed from the web site. To set the Show/Expire date use the date picker and choose appropriate times from the time drop down list. Meta keywords are words that describe the article you are writing. Search engines use these to classify the web page in their search index. Max impressions sets the maximum number of times a banner is shown before it is removed. Max clicks sets the maximum number of times a banner can be clicked on before it removed. Preview let you see a banner. After you have selected a banner you may preview it at the bottom of the screen.
Relations The Relations tab is where you relate an article and menu item to the banner.
Link Management Links to external web pages can be stored in the link library. This allows you and other site editors to reuse useful links multiple times with little effort.
Settings In Name field enter a name for the link. Example: 'BBC News'. The name entered here will be displayed on the web pages where this link is used. Category allows you to place the link in a category by clicking on the Select Category button and choosing an appropriate location for the link. This will help you group related links together.
In URL drop-down list, select the type of link you want to enter. In most cases this will be a normal 'http' link to another web page. However in some cases it might be a 'mailto:' link that enables you to link to someone's e-mail address. Add the rest of the URL in the adjacent text field.
E-FORMS Electronic forms or e-Forms are an advanced web based application that allows site-editors and administrators to collect information from web users and create reports and views of the data that is entered. This chapter offers a detailed description of the various features available through the e-forms menu.
Create new E-Form Select to create a new form from one of the following ways.
Properties Title (Mandatory field) allows you enter a unique name for the form. Although operation of the form is not in any way dependant on the name it is suggested that you provide a descriptive name that will help identify the form within the system. Placement (Mandatory field) allows you to categories the form for identification within the system. By default the new form will be placed in the General category. You can change the location using the Select button. Choose a different category from the pop-up window. You can also create a new category to allocate the form to. The Add Category option is used to create a new category. Navigation type Confirmation page are web pages which inform respondents that their response was submitted successfully. The drop-down list contains the templates for the confirmation page layout. These templates are created using Confirmation Pages option. E-Form type option allows you to choose between storing the data that the user has entered into the database and sending the data only to the mail recipient. E-mail e-Form without reports The data collected by the e-Form is sent only to the mail recipient and not stored in the database. The mail recipient is the e-mail id that you fill in the e-mail recipient option. Database e-Form with reports Data is stored in the database in addition to sending the form to the e-mail recipient, provided the e-mail id of the mail recipient is available in the form. The advantage of choosing this option is that you can query the data at a later stage. E-mail recipient allows you to enter the e-mail address of the person to whom all the data entered in the e-Form should be emailed to. Report type allows you to choose between sending the report as HTML or plain text. By default the text option is selected. Upload files provides the ability to attach files along with the e-Form. The files can be sent as a link within the e-mail or as an attachment.
The Form editor is the area where you actually create the form containing fields, buttons and label text that are to be displayed on the webpage.
The forms toolbar contains a variety of icons which are used to insert form elements into your form. Hovering over each of these icons gives you the option to insert your new form element into the position relative to where the cursor is placed in the form itself i.e. - insert below, insert above, insert to the right or insert to the left. The form editing toolbar gives you full WYSIWYG control over the creation of your form. Each form element has 4 basic parts
Drag handle (Not visible on website) enables moving the question row to a different position. Click on the blue handle, hold and move the mouse pointer to a different blue handle. The question row is moved below the question row over where the mouse button was released. Question text Click on the text to start editing it. Form input field is the actual input field. Click on it to display and edit its settings in the field properties panel on the right of the page. Mandatory check box (Not visible on website) Check the box to make the field mandatory. The question text will turn bold and red * (asterisk) is displayed at the end of the question text to denote that the question is mandatory.
When a form element is added to a form you will probably need to edit the properties of that element. This is done in the form element properties window. The contents of this window will change depending upon which form element your mouse cursor is placed on in the form editor tab.
Paginated forms If you have a very long form you have the option of paginating it.
Creating a Confirmation Page Confirmation pages are the pages that users are sent to once they have completed a form. You might want to create a standard confirmation page that is appropriate for most form submission, such as a page that contains a simple message like "Thank you." The first step in creating a confirmation page is to create an article that you wish to use as your confirmation page. Allocate this article to the category of 'confirmation pages' which is found in the 'nonmenu items' container of the Web Site Structure.
Creating a Value List Value lists are reusable sets of values for use in form elements. When you have created a value list you can use it in multiple forms and form elements.
Smart Value List A new section has been added under the e-Form module to facilitate creation of Smart value lists.
After giving the Smart Value List a name, a form view must be associated with the Smart Value list.
Create e-Form Views A view is a filtered list of all the records that are available in each application form database. These views are the basic building blocks for more advanced use of the e-Forms. By creating the necessary views, you can maintain a customer database, an inventory or any sort of information that may be useful to store in a database. It is possible to insert information into the database from the Digimaker administration interface or from online forms on the website, allowing information to be collected automatically from online users.
E-mail Views
Create a Chart from a e-Form Data from a form may be displayed as graphs and charts, similar to charts in Excel. Creating a chart involves the following steps: Accessing the charts builder Creating the chart
Chart type allows you to define the type of chart you want to create using the values. The options are line charts (Simple, smooth), area charts, bar charts, stacked charts, and pie charts. Image Format Type allows you to choose the format that the chart should be saved as. PNG is selected as default but if you have trouble copying and pasting your image into your word processor or other programs, select another format and try again. Chart title is the chart title would appear above the chart and should be descriptive for the chart. Specify X-title the X-title and appears horizontally on the left side of the x-axis of the chart. Specify Y-title the Y-title and appears horizontally below the y-axis of the chart. Comments do not appear in the chart image but is retrievable in the website. Chart Width (pixels) is the width of the chart in pixels. Experiment with different sizes to get the best result. Chart Height (pixels) is the height of the chart image in pixels. Experiment with different sizes to get the best result. Chart Grid Line offers you the ability of displaying the charts with grids or plain charts. If you want a chart with grids enabled, apart from displaying both the grid lines, you can also choose to display only vertical or horizontal grid lines Chart Operations Column name lists all the fields in the selected form. These values are to be plotted in the chart. Select one of the values for X-axis. These fields can also be categorized as numerical and nonnumeric values. Based on the type of field that you have chosen the rest of the options are enabled or disabled. It applies to both Non-numerical and numerical values Count displays the total number of occurrences of a value in the chosen column. For example, let us assume that the chart type is ‘bar charts’ and if a column contains three values, where two have the value “Washington” and one is “New York”, the chart displays one column for each city – the column for Washington would be displayed with the value “2” and the column for New York with the value “1”. It is only possible to count values in one column at a time in the chart but the values from this column can be displayed in up to five different ways at the same time. Total displays the sum for a given column. The column must contain only numerical values. Max finds the highest value available in the selected column. Min finds the lowest value available in the selected column. Avg finds the average value in the selected column.
CONTENT EXTENSIONS Content extensions enable you to add custom properties to standard Digimaker objects. You can design new properties by creating e-Forms, which can be attached to the objects you want to extend. Essentially, this feature allows you extend any content object in Digimaker. Instances of Digimaker objects you would want to extend are articles, banners, menu items and organization units. This does not need any extra coding.
Why Extend your Content? Benefits of content extensions: Fits nicely in a CMS/CRM platform concept Provides great flexibility for the developer administrator and end user. Groups extended attributes into tabs. Extends the object to have as many custom properties as you want. Content in the extensions are available from the e-Forms module for filtering and export and import from other systems.
Content Extensions examples Using content extensions on your site is very flexible and makes sure your website doesn’t have to be rebuilt just because your business has expanded or your needs have changed. For articles, content extensions can take care of everything from additional headlines and abstracts for display on the site front page to review results or hidden author-specific information. Examples: A website is reviewing computer games and in addition to normal articles they would like an article that also contains a field for the game review score, a field for a link to the game website and a range of checkboxes for categorizing the type of game. A website stores and categorizes historically related images and articles and would like to add additional information on each image: persons or places in the image and year the historical image is from. Adding a text field for the description and a dropdown for the year to the Digimaker image object would allow the site to store the additional information on each image. A news agency would like its website to allow its registered subscribers to receive articles based on their interest and also to search for other users with similar interests. To achieve this, checkboxes for 20 various areas of interest is added to the user object in the organization structure enabling the developer to display and store additional information on each registered user. Content extensions also come in handy when importing articles from other CMS or CRM systems which may contain more or different fields that the standard Digimaker fields.
SETTINGS MODULE In this section you will get a detailed review of the features available within the Settings section.
Add a New Organization The concept of 'Companies' is used within the system as a way of organizing users in a logical hierarchical structure. Branch Companies, Departments, and Employees (Users) sit below Companies in this hierarchy. A company could be your own organization, a partner's company, clients or other 'top-level' user organizational structures.
Information Section Name is the name of the company. Type allows you to choose between a Company and a Department. Parent allows you to select the placement of your organization. Org number allows you to enter your organization number. Image allows you to associate a logo with the company record. Working hours allows you to enter the organizations opening hours. Online Contact Details E–mail 1 is the primary e-mail address. E–mail 2 is the secondary e-mail address. PERSON DETAILS allows you to enter telephone numbers where. Telephone 1 is the primary telephone number. Telephone 2 is the secondary phone number. Fax allows you to enter the company Fax number. ADRESSES allows you to enter the organizations address details .
Details Tab Web page allows you to enter the URL (internet address) of the company’s web page. Comment allows you to add additional comments regarding the organisation. Code is an internal company code. Ref. Number allows you to enter a reference number. Example: client number, customer account number etc. Priority allows you to control a company's placement in the list of companies. Custom fields allow you to add extra information of your choice.
Add a new Department
Add a New Person
General Tab Person details allow you to enter the personal details of the person. Credentials allow you to enter login information for the person.
Online contact details are where you should enter online contact information for the person such as ICQ number, yahoo or msn ID. Phone numbers allows you to enter the person's telephone numbers. Addresses allow you to store the person's addresses.
Detail Tab A range of other user related information can be defined for an individual in the tabbed sections details. In the section Regional settings you may choose a standard language for your Digimaker.
Qualifications allow you to add the person's qualifications. The field requires content similar to a typical resume.
Create a New Role Defining a set of Roles allows you to create an administration hierarchy for managing your site. Each role comes with a set of privileges and access rights. Roles are used to restrict menu items and categories to users with a specific role.
Role name allows you to enter the name of the role. It is recommended that you provide a unique name which reflects the responsibilities associated with the role. Digimaker login allows you to select the check box to allow the role to login to Digimaker. Roles that do not have this check box selected cannot login to Digimaker and are considered as Public roles. These roles have permission to login to restricted parts of the website. Select parent role A Parent role is one that has a child role associated with it and has all the privileges included. By default the role ‘Administrator’ is created when Digimaker is installed. All the new roles are created under the Administrator role. The next section allows you to define the privileges of each role. You can set access limits to each of the main menus and the associated functions. All the main menus are listed one below the other. By default only the functions of content menu is displayed. Most of the functions have a ‘Permissions’ button associated with them where you can drill down the rights for the role to a greater degree of specification. Content Select all the functions or only those functions which you would like to assign to this role from the following list:
Manage articles allows you to permit the user to manage articles. You can further restrict the access rights using the Permissions button (by default the permissions window is displayed). You can deny/allow the user access to all or some of the menu items containing the articles, using the four levels of privileges. By default granting access to a menu item includes all the submenus under it. If you want to restrict access to certain submenus then expand the parent menu item and grant the access rights using the radio buttons. Browse/relate/other basic operations The menu item is visible in the tree structure of Web Site Structure. Permission to list and read articles in the menu item, and relate these articles to other areas where the user has access rights granted. Write articles for draft or approval All the rights of ‘Browse/relate/other basic operations’ plus permission to create/add new articles and edit articles but cannot publish those articles. Write and publish articles directly All the rights of both ‘Browse/relate/other basic operations’ and ‘Write articles for draft or approval’ with the additional permission to publish articles directly. However, there is no permission to approve other user’s articles. Article managing This has the super-user rights. It includes all rights and excludes none which means that it includes the permission to approve other user’s articles as well. Manage Own Users and Target Groups includes all permissions/access rights to manage only the organization that the role belongs to. This means that the role has manage rights to My Org in the Users and Target Groups. Manage full Users and Target Groups Click on the Permissions button to set access rights to all or any of the organization in the Users and Target Groups.
Manage calendars Click the Permissions button to set access rights on all or any of the categories in the calendar module using the three levels of privileges.
Browse The calendar category is visible in the Calendar listing. Permission to view calendar and events; cannot edit or add an event. Contribute Browse rights plus permission to manage only those events owned by the role; cannot manage events owned by others Manage Full access rights to view the calendar, add new events and manage all events including those events that are created by others. Manage RSS Feeds Click on the permissions button to set access rights on all or any of the categories in the RSS Feeds module using the two levels of privileges
Browse allows permission to view the contents; cannot edit or add a RSS Feed to the category. Manage allows you full access rights to view all RSS Feeds and manage the category. Manage campaigns means that there are no permissions to set for the role. Selecting this option enables the user to directly manage the campaigns module.
Adding Persons to a Role There are two ways to add a person to a role. The easiest way to add a person is to edit the personal details of that person and associate him to a role which is explained in method 1. Method 1: Select Content menu from the main menu and expand Users and Target Groups from Content Explorer. A list of organizations is displayed. There are two ways in which you can access the Edit page of the person’s details: Expand the organization and the list of members is displayed. Click on the person’s name or click on the downward arrow and select Edit. The details of the person are displayed in the Edit mode. Enter the name of the person in the search box and click Search to directly go to the Edit page of the person’s details.
Click Select Roles. This displays all the available roles.
Select the role that you want to associate this person with from the list of roles and click OK.
Method 2: The first step in adding a person to a role is to access the list of all available roles. The List all option displays all the roles in the system. There are two ways that you can access: Go to the Roles sub menu in the Settings menu and select List all from the menu. Click on the icon next to Roles in the Settings Explorer and select List all from the menu.
Select the role to which you want to all persons from the list of roles.
A list of members belonging to role (or an empty list if no persons are added) is displayed. If there are no members then an empty list is displayed. Click on the Add button.
Select View all in the Users and Target Groups section of the Content Explorer. All the available organizations are displayed. Navigate through the Users and Target Groups until you find the org/department where the users you want to add are listed.
Select the persons that you want to add using the check boxes and click Apply at the bottom left of the window.
LOGS The logs module is a simple display module for the error logs that occur within Digimaker based off the log4net logger settings within the configuration file. The logger layout must be set to XmlLayout for this module to work.
The List of Logs screen displays logs for the current date. Using the Log date selector, the user can select to view logs for a certain date. Each log entry contains information about the module that initiated the log entry, the message logged, any exceptions that were thrown as well, the time the entry was created and the level of the log entry.
STATISTICS Digimaker offers the Statistics menu to track and analyze your web site traffic. Good visitor analysis is a prerequisite to a sound web strategy. The Statistics module of Digimaker is very comprehensive in its coverage and allows you to do the following: It helps you find out number of visitors during a specific period of time. Allows you to distinguish between repeat visitors from first time and one time as well as visitors from your own organization. It can track how visitors found your website or how long they stayed on a particular page. It can also tell us what browser, what version of a browser and what operating system a visitor is using. Reports can be either text or graphics based. This makes understanding web trends easier. You can access the Statistics tab from the Main Tab Menu. Statistics Tab shows the overall summary of the web site that is displayed when you choose the Statistics tab.
Statistics Explorer The Statistics Explorer offers two different methods of viewing report information – Statistics by menu item and General Statistics. Statistics by Menu Item Statistics by menu item allows you to view reports about individual items in the menu.
At the top of Workspace the Select limited to that time period.
Select other period if you want to choose a combination of a particular year and month. Totals identify the total number of visits, views, users, and article views for a specific menu item.
Views are request to just that particular menu item. This is excluding the submenu item views. Views including sub tree shows the request made to the menu item and all the sub menu items under the menu item that you are currently viewing. If a user spends time on a particular menu item for 20 minutes, it is counted as one visit. Users are the sum of identified and unidentified users requesting this menu item. Users including sub tree is the number of users viewing the menu item and its sub menu items. Article views are the number of articles that have been viewed in this menu item. Article views including sub tree is the number of articles in the menu item as well as it's sub menu items that have been viewed. Users show information about the number of users who have visited a particular menu item. It distinguishes between identified and unidentified users. For unidentified users, you will only see which host (IP address) they use because they have not logged in. For users logged in with username and password, you will see who they are and which company and department they belong to.
Articles shows information about the articles viewed in a particular menu item. It shows how many times an article has been viewed in a menu item along with the total views.
Visited menu items below this shows statistics about all other submenu items under the menu item you are currently viewing the report for. Click on any of the menu item names to get a detailed summary report of that menu item. This report includes the submenu item that has been visited including its own submenu if any, number of users, article views in the menu including the articles in the submenu and the bandwidth used.
General Statistics General Statistics offers overall summary of the web traffic trends for the entire site. In the previous section you may only have had access rights to view reports based on a specific menu group or groups. In this section you can review statistics for overall site activity.
General Overview This is the first screen you will see when you click on the General Overview link under General Statistics in the Statistics Explorer It gives you a quick overview of the traffic trends for the current day, without having to select a specific report. Time period ‘Today’ is selected by default.
All Visiting Organizations This report gives a summary of all the companies registered in the user module. You can view organization-wise information such as name of the Organization, number of hits, Article views, Menu item views, Visits, and the Graphical view.
DIRECT EDIT Direct edit makes the editorial process easier and faster. It turns users into website editors without much training. It also allows you to enable users to edit site content without giving them access to the Digimaker administration interface. If you are logged in to the system and have a Role which allows you to use the Direct Edit facility, you will see editable page 'hot-spots'. These are identified by a grey dotted line surrounding the editable sections of page content. To start editing, right-click on the content area you wish to change. A pop-up menu will be displayed. Select Edit directly and you can begin changing the selected content through the web page itself. When you have finished editing the content just click out of the dotted area with the cursor and the changes will be published.
Direct Editing of Menu Items To edit a menu item in Direct edit mode, right-click on a menu item. This displays a context menu with the following options: Edit direct allows you to change the name of the menu item directly in the web reader. Edit complete allows you to perform changes to the properties of a menu item. A pop-up window will appear containing all the available menu item properties
To create New menu item, right-click on the menu group under which you want to create a new menu item and select New menu item. A pop-up window will be displayed allowing you to enter the menu item properties. New article allows you to create new articles, right-click on the menu group under which you want to create a new article and select New article. A pop-up window appears into which you can enter the new article.
Select Go to Digimaker if you want to quit Edit direct and enter the full administration interface. Quit editing allows you to quit Direct Edit but still remain on your website. The 'hot-spot' identification will disappear and the web page will appear as if you were a regular user.
Direct Editing of Article Items To Direct Edit article items right-click on the text in an article. This displays a context menu with the following options: Edit direct allows you to edit the article you have selected on the same page. An article may appear as three separate fields; heading, abstract and full story. Click a field to edit it. To edit the headline of an article, right-click on the heading. Edit complete allows you to perform major changes to an article. A pop-up window will appear containing a form displaying all the article properties. New article allows you to create a new article under the chosen menu group. A pop-up window will appear which includes a form for you to enter the article properties. Go to Digimaker quits Edit direct and takes you to the Digimaker administration interface. Quit editing allows you to quit Direct Editing but still remain on your website. The hotspot identification will disappear and the web page will appear as if you were a regular user.
DIGIMAKER OFFICE INTEGRATION The Digimaker Office Integration Client allows you integrate Digimaker and Microsoft Office 2003. As a result, you can manage documents and articles in Digimaker using Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Configuring Microsoft Office 2003 For Digimaker Office Integration Client to work, you need to configure Microsoft Office 2003. You may require the Microsoft Office 2003 Installation CD to complete the following procedure. To install Digimaker Office Integration: Step 1 - Click on Start>Control Panel>Add or Remove Programs. Step 2 - Select Microsoft Office and click Change, this displays the Microsoft Office 2003 Setup - Maintenance Mode Options Wizard. Step 3 - Select Add or Remove Features from the list and click Next. This displays up the Custom Setup screen. The Microsoft Office Setup will now install .Net Programmability Support which is essential for the Office integration client to work.
Step 4 - Choose advanced customization of applications and click Next, this displays the Advanced customization screen.
Step 5 - In the Advanced customization screen navigate to the Microsoft Office Word Node expand it. Step 6 - Choose .Net Programmability Support and select Run from this computer, click Update to start installation. The Microsoft Office Setup will now install .Net Programmability Support which is essential for the Office integration client to work. You have to install Digimaker Office Integration Tool to get all the feature of this integration.
Logging into Digimaker You can use the Digimaker toolbar to log into Digimaker.
Opening an Article The Digimaker Office Integration client allows you open a Digimaker article from Microsoft Word. You can edit this article, save, and publish it from within Microsoft Word. You can view and edit the article in separate sections: Headline, Abstract and Full Story. If the Digimaker Office Integration Client is installed, the Digimaker toolbar appears in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel. If you have installed the Digimaker Office Integration client and if the Digimaker toolbar is not showing, click View>Toolbars> Digimaker.
ACTIVE DIRECTORY INTEGRATION Active Directory integration allows you to integrate your active directory users with Digimaker corporate structure thereby having a single sign on, have a common relation between the active directory users and Digimaker users and have more secured applications.
To add an Active Directory, click the Directory service tab and the click on Edit it opens a new window here you can fill all the necessary information and then click on save and it will create a new Active Directory for you. Just see the below figure where you have to fill all the necessary information.
The Active Directory Integration Configuration Window This window is used to change all settings related to AD integration. The window is divided into three tabs: General: Configure all general settings related to the integration. Organizational Units: Configure mappings for fields available for organizational unit objects. Users: Configure mappings for fields available for user objects.
Manual Import/Export - To start an import or export of data, simply edit an integration instance from the Directory Services tab of the website in Server Manager, by double-clicking on the integration, and click the Import/Export button in the General tab of the Integration Configuration window. Import - Click the Import to Digimaker button to start importing data from the directory service to Digimaker. A progress bar will show the progress of the import. First-time import of data may take several minutes, so please be patient. Export - Click the Export to Directory Service button to start exporting data from Digimaker to the directory service. A progress bar will show the progress of the export. An export should only occur after an import has occurred in order to map object properly. If, however an export is done before the import, this won’t harm your Active Directory. It is recommend to always have an up-to-date backup of Active Directory available before performing a manual export.