Some new features of IBM WCM 7

Whats new in WCM 7?

Just playing around with WCM 7 running on portal 7 and I have noticed the following new features

Some major changes to note with V7.0 are:

1. Sites have gone!
We only have site areas
2. Presentation template construction changed
Instead of XML style tags for accessing WCM elements and components, we now use square brackets
So for example, to access the "Body" element:
with V6.0 and V6.1:

But now with V7.0:
[Element context="current" type="content" key="Body"]
3. When viewing a Presentation template the tag that referrs to a component itself becomes a clickable link to that component.
4. Hover pop-ups now appear all over the place to show you some information about that item without the need to open it.
5. Gone is the tabbed control to show open windows. This has been replaced by a new "Open Views" control on the left hand vertical menu.
6. Folders have been introduced to provide hierarchical storage of Authoring Templates, Presentation Templates and Components.
7. Portlet configuration is now been moved from its normal location top right of the portlet to a "Preferences" control on the left hand menu.
8. A Help link has been added to the left hand navigation menu and this opens a pop up of the WCM Infocenter.
9. Views have changed to allow an all library perspective rather than the old version which always filtered items by a currently selected library.
10. A new "projects" feature has been added to provide the grouping of multiple items to be treated as a single publishable entity.
11. The creation of a new item ("New" button) is now available even though an item is open. This is now located in the new control on the left hand menu.
12. Number of rows displayed can now be changed between 10, 25 and 50 without having to enter "configure" mode of the portlet.
13. Components can now be workflowed
A new "Add Workflow" button has been added so that any component can be workflowed
14. Authoring Templates can now set as "resource templates". These are templates that can be used for binary files.
15. Presentation templates can be set as defaults for the Authorting Template rather than forcing you create template mappings in site areas.
16. Field names can be localised allowing different editors to see different field captions on the same authoring template.

Notes about creating a new library in WCM 7
A new feature has been introduced to automatically create some items into a new library.

This is the first of what I feel will be many posts describing features of the new version of WCM 7 that can optionally be installed with IBM Portal 7.

New library creation feature

You create WCM libraries using the "Web Content Libraries" portlet.
The interface has been changed and now has background coloured buttons to indicate most used actions. For example the "Create new library" button has a blue background with white lettering but the other buttons "View locked items" etc. are black text on grey buttons.
When creating a WCM library you now have an additional option:
"create default items in new library"
Previously, new WCM libraries were entirely empty and you needed to create each of the various items in a particular order.
Typically:

* Create workflow action
* Create workflow stages and include actions
* Create workflows and include stages
* Create authoring template and add default workflow
* Create menu component
* Create presentation template
* Create site and add template mapping of authoring template and presenation template
* Create site areas
* Create content

With WCM 7, when you use this new option the library is created and popluated with the following items:

Workflow Action = "Expire"
Workflow Action = "Publish"
Workflow Stage = "Draft Stage".
Workflow Stage = "Publish Stage". This is pre-configued with the "Publish" workflow action
Workflow Stage = "Expire Stage". This is pre-configued with the "Expire" workflow action
Workflow = "Express Workflow". This is pre-configured with the "Publish State" workflow stage.
Workflow = "Three Stage Workflow". This is pre-configued with the following workflow stages: "Draft Stage", "Publish Stage" and "Expire Stage".
Presentation Template = "Article Presentation".
Component (Authoring Tool) = "Article toolbar"
Component (Menu) = "Articles List"
Authoring Template = "Article"
SiteArea = "Articles". This is pre-configured with the mapping of "Article" and "Article Presentation".
Content item "Sample Article"
Content item "Sample Article 2"

Thats it for now. There are so many other features that it is going to take many posts to cover them all.

Have fun!