July 2009
This is part four of the OWS series of video tutorials presented by Paul Deschenes covering Personalization, Text Editor, Logging and Reporting in OWS.
This tutorial demonstrates how to add personalization to the knowledge base module. We demonstrate InterModule Communications and create a ‘My Saved Articles’ module. This module allows the user to create their own list of favourite knowledgebase articles.
Following this we demonstrate working with JQuery to create a ToolTip which displays the article details whenever a user hovers over the links from their saved articles. Next we demonstrate how to change the “fetching data” message that is displayed for Ajax module refreshes (ie. When searching for an article and the site is loading the data) to an animated GIF. We then demonstrate how to enable the OWS Text Editor, which allows us to create Rich Text/HTML articles.
At this point we explore an advanced OWS technique where we change the assignment of a single category selection for an article and we create multi-category selection for each knowledgebase article.
To finish the tutorial we cover interactive logging techniques, and beginning reporting with OWS columns and column templates.
The Series
These tutorials aim to introduce the beginner to Open Web Studio and demonstrate how to create a functional web application with little or no coding experience required.
This series will take the viewer through six episodes, where at the end the viewer will have a fully functional Technical Knowledge Base application.
Open Web Studio is a free robust tool for building data bound forms, modules, utilities and more.
Major Framework Features of Open Web Studio:
- Zero Footprint
- Browser based IDE environment
- Rapid change maintenance
- Universal Data Binding
- Rich Debugging
- Supports AJAX, JSON, REST
- Create distributable OWS applications for DNN, Sharepoint, .Net applications
You can download OWS from
www.openwebstudio.com
The videos contain:
Video 1 - Introduction, Building the Saved Articles Module
- Introduction and recap of previous episodes
- Building the Saved Articles application
- How to add a new OWS module
- How to create a new module configuration
- How to publish the module and link it to the new configuration
- Actions tab
- How to create the table in the database for the Saved Articles module
- How to assign a control header
- How to setup the display HTML for the module
- Region: Header, Details and Footer templates
Time Length: 8min 59secs
Video 2 - Add to My Saved Function, Delete Function, JQuery Tooltip
- How to create the Add To My Saved KBs function
- How to modify the detail template for an article
- How to add a Fetch call to MySaved Articles
- MySaved Articles module, creating the code for the AddSaved query string
- Check saved count query
- How to add a delete function to my saved articles
- Using JQuery to get a tooltip providing information on the articles a user has saved
- How to install tooltipmain.js
- jQuery introduction
- How to initialise the tooltip javascript file
- The control header
- How to edit the portal.css file for styling the tooltip
- The detail template to display the tooltip when hovering over the title
Time Length: 11min 17secs
Video 3 - Fetching Data Customization, Using the Text / HTML Editor
- User interface enhancements
- Demonstration of the “Fetching Data” message
- How to change the “Fetching Data” message to an animated gif
- How to edit the OWS.js file
- How to enable a OWS Rich Text / HTML Editor for the articles
- How to edit the Knowledgebase Manager configuration
- How to configure the edit form to use the Text Editor
- How to configure the add form to use the Text Editor
- How to add the FCKEditor Javascript calls
- How to edit the Knowledgebase Manager Configuration to allow the display of HTML
Time Length: 10min 15secs
Video 4 - Multi Category Selection for a Knowledgebase Article - OWS Checkboxes (Advanced Technique)
- How to change the Category drop down list into Check Boxes
- How to edit the KB Manager Configuration
- How to create a new table for holding one or more categories for an article
- No longer need category information in the KB Article table
- How to edit the update, insert statements and edit, add forms
- How to create the Checkboxes and use SubQuery
- Escaping quotations
- Naming the Checkboxes with unique ids
- Edit form: How to tick checkboxes with the selected categories
- How to update the Update and Insert actions
- Demonstration of the Categories Checkboxes
Time Length: 15min 12secs
Video 5 - Interactive Logging Techniques, Beginning Reporting - OWS Columns and Column Templates
- How to add a log to track every user and which article they view, rate, or add to their saved list
- How to build a Log table
- ‘If Set Rating’, log when rating is a success
- ‘Else’ log that a user is viewing
- If Insert into AddSaved is successful, log details
- How to create a Reporting Page
- How to create an OWS Reporting module
- The Columns and Column Template features in OWS
- Query template
- Columns
- How to view the report log
Time Length: 11min 56secs
Total Time Length: 57min 39secs
So far in the 'How to Build a Public Knowledge Base Module with OWS' series we have covered:
How to install Open Web Studio, a review of the Open Web Studio key components and support features, and how to build your first components with Quick Builder.
This episode walks you through downloading and installing OWS, adding and configuring the module on a page, opening and reviewing the key components of the OWS Administration development environment and building your first Master-Detail-Edit form using the OWS Quickbuilder utility. At the conclusion, you will have built the creating and editing components for adding articles to your knowledge base application.
Deep dive explanation of what Quick Builder did in episode one and then recreating the master-detail-edit article pages manually.
This episode explores the actual coding process. While Quickbuilder is a great "getting started" tool, it does not provide the understanding necessary to build and customize modules to specific requirements. In this tutorial we dissect and manually build the module to get a full understanding of building a query, using AJAX calls and other OWS actions, and formatting the results so that you can build your own modules of any type with any requirement.
This tutorial demonstrates how to build the user search page for searching knowledge base articles. We demonstrate how to implement record paging and column sorting, how to create a categories module and how to edit the knowledge base manager page so that we can record categories for each of our articles.
We then explore SQL Server, and show you how to enable and configure Full Text Search on the server. This is so that within the modules we can implement the Full Text Search syntax to provide the users greater functionality in their searches.
Following this we show you the principles for a query based look up drop down field so that you can query tables from the database to make record selections, and to finish the tutorial, how to output the articles that people are viewing so they are printable.
Throughout the next issues the following episodes will cover:
This tutorial demonstrates Debugging, Enhanced Reporting, Importing Records and Scheduling in Open Web Studio.
We begin the tutorial by demonstrating how to debug your OWS application using the built in OWS tools. We show you how to debug form variables, session variables, SQL queries, and troubleshoot problems.
We enhance the reporting page that we built in episode 4 and we provide a facility to export your report to Microsoft Excel CSV files and HTML formatted Word documents.
Following this we enhance the Knowledgebase Manager page so that it can import records from a CSV file, this allows you to automatically import multiple knowledgebase articles simultaneously.
To finish, we demonstrate how to schedule your OWS configuration using the DotNetNuke Scheduler. We demonstrate how to setup a query which executes each day and checks for any articles that have a pending status. If there any are pending articles, an email is sent to the administrator of the website.
This tutorial demonstrates how to place a "Send This to a Friend" email link on each Knowledge Base article. Following this we show you how to integrate AddThis into the Knowledge Base module, AddThis is a bookmarking tool.
Next we demonstrate how to share an article on Facebook using the Facebook Share API and to finish, we demonstrate how to display and search Yahoo! answers via their API. This helps to provide the user with additional information related to the Knowledge Base article.