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• Updated On 4.0.0

Author Screens

As mentioned earlier, Crafter Studio provides authors the tools for creating/managing content in experiences. In this section we’ll take a look at various screens in Crafter Studio an author may encounter.

Logging in

To log in to Crafter Studio:

• Enter the following in the URL of your browser: http://SERVERNAMEHERE/studio
• Enter your user name
• Enter your password
• Click “Log In”

Note: You can change the language used for the Studio UI by clicking on Language on the log in screen.

Roles

After logging in, depending on what access rights have been setup for your user account, you can have one of two primary roles as a content author:

• Content Manager (Publisher Role) A content Manager has the ability to approve and reject workflow. A content manager also has access to a number of dashboards which are not available to content contributors including Recently Published and Approved Scheduled Items.
• Content Contributor(Author Role) A content contributor has access to create, edit and submit content

Projects

Projects is the first screen you will encounter after logging in to Crafter Studio. This screen lists all of the projects you have been granted permission to. From this screen you can navigate to any project. Your projects can be viewed either in a list or in a grid.

Here’s the Projects screen with the projects in a list:

Here’s the Projects screen with the projects in a grid:

You can get back to the Projects screen by: * Clicking on the Navigation Menu icon at the top right corner, then click on “Projects” on the top left of the Global panel

Projects (Admin)

Crafter Studio administrators can also create and delete projects from this screen.

Account Management

Account Management is where you go to change your personal Crafter Studio settings like language or to change your password.

To get to Account Management:

• Click on the Navigation Menu icon at the top right corner
• Click on Account under Global

Project Dashboard

Each project has a Project Dashboard. To view a project’s dashboard, click on the Navigation Menu icon at the top right corner of the screen, or click on Dashboard at the top of the Sidebar.

Access the Dashboard from the Navigation Menu

Access the Dashboard from the Sidebar

This screen is an overview of the workflow for that given project. The project dashboard has different dashlets depending on your role.

Each dashboard has a header

Expand Collapse control. Each widget can be closed and opened to hide the items shown by the widget. This setting is remembered by your browser

Dashlet title and count. Most dashlets include a count at the end of the name for the number of items in the widget

Dashlet level options. Options are different on each widget

Show count. Some dashlets allow the author to decide how many items they want to see in the dashlet

Content “type” filter: Some dashlets allow you to filter them by a broad content type (All, Pages, Components)

For the dashboard shown above, here are the dashlets listed:

• Items Waiting for Approval

  • Shows all items currently in workflow
  • Viewable only to admins and publishers

• Approved Scheduled Items

  • Shows all items approved for a specific scheduled deployment date
  • Viewable only to admins and publishers

• Recently Published

  • Shows all items that have been previously deployed
  • Viewable only to admins and publishers

• My Recent Activity

  • Shows all items recently modified by the current user
  • Viewable by all users

• Icon Guide

  • The Icon guide is simply a legend to help authors and content managers with the iconography on the system. While it can be very complex to sum up the state and nature of content in a glance, Crafter Studio attempts to achieve a high level visual summary for each object icons. You will see these icons throughout the application whenever an object is presented to the user. The icon always shows the Current state of the object.

  • Describes the meaning of icons within Crafter Studio

  • Viewable by all users

  • The Icon guide breaks down icons in to their elements. You have two basic elements which can be combined to form a specific icon: the item type and the worfkflow indicator.

    Item Types

    Item types are high level archetypes of content objects within the system. These types and the iconography associated with them provide a basic classification of the type of object at a glance.

    : A page is exactly what you would expect, it’s a URI addressable object that represents a web page or resource.

    : A component is an object that is generally not URI addressable on the project. Examples are objects like Banners, Touts, Sidebar content etc. Components are usually re-usable assets that can be assigned and shared across many pages.

    : A taxonomy is an object the same as a component used for classifying items.

    Below is a list of all the other item types available:

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    Workflow States

    Workflow States help authors and content managers understand at a glance what is going on with the content at a high level. Is it Live? Is it work in progress? Is it currently checked out? In some sort of approval process?

    : The content has never been pushed live. This helps authors quickly identify which objects that are in progress are already live and which ones are entirely new.

    : Edited means that the item has been edited since it was made live. Items move to edited as soon as they are created or when they are edited.

    : Items which carry the red trash can icon but are not editable and previewable are deleted. You will only see these items in dashboards which show historical data

    : A locked item is currently in the process of being edited by another author.

    : Item is currently being handled by the system

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    : Any item which carries the airplane icon is in some sort of workflow

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    : Item has a launch schedule associated with it

    : Item is currently being published

    : You will find that some objects have a red circle with a slash in the middle, this means that the object is not deleted but it should not be displayed on the project. It’s essentially a logical delete. Imagine a scenario where you need to take an object down immediately because of an inaccuracy while you make corrections. Disable is perfect for this and several other scenarios.

    Publishing Status/Target

    : Item has been published to the staging publishing target

    : Item has been published to the live publishing target

Selecting a dashboard item

Dashboard items have the ability to be selected. Selecting an item allows the user to interact with the selected items via the context navigation

Items in the dashboard has a icons which shows the type and current workflow status of the item

Clicking on Options (the three dots next to the item) shows the type and current workflow status of

the item, plus all oprions available e.g. Edit, Publish, etc.

Preview

Every project has a preview. This allows users to see, edit and test the project in a safe authoring sandbox prior to publishing changes.

• Preview is a fully functional project but in a safe-to-edit environment.
• The top center shows workflow status and options (three dots) for the current page
• Author can change the type of preview from one channel to another
• Author can turn on in-context and drag and drop editing features
• Author can change the targeting attributes used to view the project
• Author can view the publish status of the project

Experience Builder Panel

• When in preview mode your context navigation will show an additional control beside the publishing status.
• The Edit Mode and Move mode icons turns on the Experience Builder panel which allows you to use in-context editing and various tools for creating your page in a panel on the right
• Search allows you to search for items such as components, images, etc. in your project
• Components allows you to create a component and also lists all available components in your project which can then be dragged and dropped into your page
• Browse Components allows you to browse for components which can then be dragged and dropped into your page
• Component Drop Targets allows you to select a content type, which then shows you the drag and drop area for that content type
• Assets allows you to search/list assets such as images in the project
• Audience Targeting allows you to view and set targeting attributes for the project.
• Page Explorer allows you to browse/list pages in the project
• Device Simulator allows you to change the type of preview from one device to another e.g. phone to tablet
• Settings allows you to turns on/off in-context editing and setup highlighting of drop zones

In-Context Editing

When in-context editing is turned on (Edit mode pencil is green or Move mode two vertical ellipsis is blue at the top), it puts the page in construction mode. When you hover your mouse around regions of the page that have been wired for in-context editing, a pencil will show up instead of the mouse cursor.

This pencil allows you to edit the content of the wired region, including the current page’s template and controller depending on your user account permissions

To turn off in-context editing, click on the Switch off editing off switch icon at the top, which will then turn the Edit mode/Move mode icon to gray.

Convenient keyboard shortcuts are also provided, press ? to see the list of commands.

Search

The Search tool allows you to search for components and static assets in the project then display the results from which the user can drag and drop into the current page being viewed if there are configured drop targets in it

Add Components

The Add Components tool allows you to create new components by dragging components from the panel and on to the screen to configured drop targets. A new component with default values will then be visible and ready for editing when a new component is dropped on the screen.

You may drag around a component from one position to a different position by enabling the Move mode (by clicking the Move mode icon at the top right, or by using the keyboard shortcut). Crafter Studio administrators can configure what components are available in this panel.

Browse Components

The Browse Components tool allows you to search / select a content type in the project then display the existing components for that content type that can be dragged and dropped into the current page being viewed if there are configured drop targets in it

When you drag a component into the page being previewed and there are no drop zones configured in the page, you will see a snack bar like below:

Component Drop Targets

The Component Drop Targets tool allows you to select a content type in the project then display the configured drop target for that content type on the current page being previewed

Assets

The Assets tool allows you to search/list assets such as images that can be dragged into configured drop targets in the project

Audience Targeting

The Audience Targeting tool allows you to view and set targeting attributes for the project

Page Explorer

The Page Explorer tool allows you to browse/list content items such as pages, components and level descriptors in the project and make edits to them by clicking on the three dots next to the content item that appears when you hover your mouse on it

Device Simulator

The Device Simulator tool allows an author to review the current page in the context of all devices supported by the project.

The phone and tablet can be rotated through the use of the rotation control next to the width and height input boxes.

Settings

The Settings tool allows you to switch on/off the Edit Mode (in-context editing) and setup highlighting of drop targets

Common Navigation Elements

Toolbar

The Toolbar is a fixed element at the top of the page and cannot be scrolled off the page. The toolbar provides contextual workflow and other options relative to the page you are looking at, content you have selected or tool you are using.

The basic elements of the Contextual Navigation bar are:

• Branded Logo Button: Toggles the sidebar on/off.
• Project Name and Project switcher: Displays the project’s name and lets you switch the project being previewed through a dropdown
• Quick Create: A shortcut for content authors to create configured content without having to navigate through the project tree.
• Preview Address Bar: An area reserved for navigation buttons (back, forward and reload page), the address of the current page being previewed, and an options link whose content will change based off of the current page view and user role.
• Edit Mode Switch: Toggles the in-context editing and Experience Builder panel on/off
• Publish Status: Allows the user to view the project’s publish status.
• Search: Allows the user to search for items in the project
• Navigation Menu: Takes the user to a panel with Global and Project options containing various links such as Dashboard, About, Help, etc.

Sidebar

The sidebar opens a menu that allows access to the following:

• Dashboard: An overview of the workflow for that given project. See above for more information
• Project Explorer: Allows navigation to all pages, components and documents in the system
• Project Tools (available depending on your role): Contains project administration tools such as Plugin Management, Encryption Tool, etc. See here for more information

The menu/panel width can be resized freely by the user and will remember where you set the length and width on your browser

Project Explorer

• Users can have multiple navigation paths / path tree open at the same time e.g. templates, pages, etc.
• If closed, the menu should retain it’s last state when re-opened.
• Each item listed has item state and publish target icons next to them
• Root folders allow a user to drill in to a hierarchy of content. If the item is previewable it will also be clickable.
• Clicking on an item will take the author to a preview of the item.

• Clicking the three dots next to each item or right-clicking on an item provides the user options whose content will change based off of the item selected and user role.