Title: Sections Overview

Using sections, you can make your Front page or a space dashboard as simple as a single page or blog-style list of articles, or you can create a dashboard with section panels displaying any cross section at any volume level -- you can show as little as just titles or entire pages within a section.

Sections can be used as Front Page Sections, Dashboard Sections, Article Sections, Profile Sections, Email Digest Sections and in filtering Email Notifications.

Sections may be filled by dynamic queries or static lists that you indicate in the section configuration or in a Collection. You can create sections based on any of the following criteria, and, in many cases, you may include additional boolean conditions by limiting on search criteria:



Sections can be sorted based on alphabetical (forward or reverse), chronological (forward or reverse), random, discussion activity or in a specified order.

Sections may be configured to show as much or as little content as you like. You can configure sections to display:



In Brief and Full sections, it's possible to suppress the Title and Details information - so that the article content floats in the section's display area.

If you have activated Page and Comment Moderation, sections can be set to show or exclude articles and comments which are in Published, Unpublished, Rejected, Locked or Unlocked status.

The contents of all sections are displayed with permission filters applied, so that users only see information to which they have read rights.

This help topic covers

  1. What the various section configuration settings do
  2. An example of the Front Page section setup (server admin permissions required)
  3. How to edit the default sections for all spaces (server admin permissions required)
  4. An example of Space Dashboard specific section setup (space admin permissions required)
  5. An example of using a section in the body of an article
  6. An example of the Email Digest section setup (available at both server and My Account levels)
  7. An example of using a section to filter Email Notifications


Note: With TeamPage Release 5.0, the term “project” was renamed to “space” and "label'" was renamed to "tag". Some older screenshots may use the original terms. The definition of space as TeamPage's named container for a set of sharable TeamPage Articles did not change - only its name, see Customer2797.

What the Section Configuration Settings Do



The basic Edit Section form provides a number of settings that can be used to configure how a section acts and appears.



Review the Space Templates help topic to learn about the default templates.

Section Title



This is how the section will be titled where shown. You can name it anything you like. The section title can be suppressed in the Display Options.

The {0} Option in Section Titles



You can edit the existing sections or add new ones. Anywhere you see {0} text, the corresponding screen in Space Dashboard section setup will be replaced with the Space name itself, so the title text {0} Headlines will become TaskForce Headlines in the TaskForce space (see the Project Dashboard section setup screen below). This option is most commonly used in Digest Sections, wherein the {0} Articles section iterates over all the digest spaces and, therefore, lists out a series of sections that appear as Alpha Articles followed by Beta Articles and so on.

The Active Checkbox



When this box is checked, the section is active. Unchecking this box allows you to keep this section and its settings in the list, but have it be inactive so it doesn't actually display to users.

Include Articles



Type



This drop down allows you to drive the content of the section. There are a large number of Type options. In the Headline example, tag is chosen and the :headline tag is chosen from the list.



Recent Articles



This will cause the most recent articles in a given timeslice to appear.

Recently Edited Articles



Selecting this Type will selected articles that have been edited at least once. As opposed to Recent Articles, you do not have the Include option to select Comment, Trackback or Other.

Discussions



This section Type is used to make it easy to show and consolidate "discussion threads," that is articles which have one or more nested comments. Only articles that have at least one comment will be included and the hierarchy of comments made on other comments in a thread will be clearly displayed.

When the Discussions section Type is chosen, four additional sort orders are available in the drop down: Last Active Thread First, Earliest Active Thread First, Most Commented-on First and Least Commented-on First.

In a Traction TeamPage deployment involving a lot of comments, a Recent Articles and Comments section may end up showing 10 comments in a row with the same title (e.g."re: Budget Meeting"). In this case, it may be preferable to remove comments from the Front Page Recent Articles section and add a Discussions section showing Last Active Thread First.

Specific Articles



This Type allows you to specify one or more specific articles to display by typing in the Traction ID (space name and a number, e.g. Engineering10) of each. Such a section is not "dynamic" in that you must edit the section definition if you wish to change which articles are displayed.

Collection Option



Choose this Type if you want to make an arbitrary list of articles which you actively control appear in the section. You then have to choose a collection. Collections are made by individual users and can be named. You will be able to select a user and any of that user's saved collections.



Note: If you select this option, when users click the resulting Section Title link, the selected timeslice will not change but Traction will show a view of all articles in the specified collection.

Tag Options



If you chose the tag, tag Added, or tag Removed option, then you have to choose one or more labels by clicking the Add button to the right of the Tags line or by manually typing in the appropriate tag.

Tag vs Tag Added and Tag Removed: The Tag choice will cause an article marked Headline to appear in the order the article was posted. The Tag Added or Tag Removed options order articles based on the date/time an action was taken to tag an article with a given tag or the date/time an action was taken to remove (un-tag) a tag from an article.

Note: This will also impact the Newest First and Oldest First sort orders. If the section is set to a type of Tag, the date used for sorting will be the article date. If set to a type of Tag Added or Tag Removed, the date used for sorting will be the date that the label was added or removed.

Named Pages Options



See Page Name Management and Name History for information on these options.

Moderation Options



See Page and Comment Moderation for information on these options.

External Search Engine Options



These are only available if you have Solr or an older TeamPage external search engine installed. See Using External Searches in Sections.

Ignore Date Range and Include All Entries



Checking this option causes the section to ignore the selected timeslice and ignore the min and max settings. For example, this is the default in the Bulletins section. You would want to use this setting to show important articles that are "timeless" - in sections for content like bulletins, FAQs, Policies and so on.

Note: If you select this option, when users click the resulting Section Title link, they will be taken to an All Time view showing all the articles meeting the criteria specified in the section definition.

Only Include Posts by the Current User/Only Include Posts by this User



Checking Only Include Posts by the Current User will filter the section for matching articles authored by the the user that is logged in and reading the section.

In the case of a Profile page, the Only Include Posts by this User option filters by the account that the Profile is for.

Create Section from URL



When you click this link, you will be able to enter a URL from a Traction view which Traction will parse to create the section settings. This is particularly useful when creating sections based on External Search Engine views.

Filter by



The Section Type setting in Include Articles above is the primary filter for section content. The Filter by settings let you drill down further and filter by content type (article or comment) or moderation status (published, draft or rejected)



Search



You can constrain the list of articles to be shown in the section based on a Rapid Selector expression.

See the Project Dashboard Section Setup screenshot below for an example of constraining a list of articles with the Objective tag to only the subset that is also marked with the ToDo tag. The expression used there is "i(:objective and )" which ensures that the two tags appear together (at the title or paragraph level)

Another useful example is to filter a Recent Edits section, which could be very "noisy," for a certain type of content, such as the articles with the requirement or policy tag. To do this, simply add ":requirement" to the search box.

Include



Using checkboxes you can specify any combination of Articles, Comments, Trackbacks and Other.

The Other option is rarely used, it is for events like Reclassification (when labels are changed) and Update (when articles are edited) events.

Filter by Status



If Page and Comment Moderation is being used, you can filter by the status of articles and comments.

Skip Articles Appearing in Other Sections



If you click this, the page will not include articles that are already displayed in a previous section, If and only if the previous section was also set to Skip Articles.

Display Options



The display options allow you to specify the width (how many "columns" in the interface), volume (titles to full article), number of articles, and sorting. You can also constrain how much meta-data appears (e.g. title, author/date details).



Width



The effect of the width setting depends on the skin that is used and the view type. In the default skin (Proteus) Front Page and Project Dashboards, Large is full width while Medium and Small result in a two column layout.

However, in the default skins, single articles and email digest views ignore the width setting.

Note that the actual behavior of the sections is determined by both the Width setting of a given column and the Width settings of the sections before and after it. For instance, if a dashboard has only two sections, the first set to Large and the second set to Medium, they will both appear as full page width, since the first section is not allowed to display as less than this width. Traction adjusts the behavior of the section set to Medium to that of Large, as it provides no benefit to show it at half page width.

Volume



A pulldown menu provides the same Volume selections that are available in a Traction view: Titles, Details, Snippets, Brief Content and Full Content.



Min and Max



These sections designate the minimum and maximum number of articles or comments to display in the section.

Min: If the Minimum is positive (e.g. 5), it will show at least the Min number of articles or comments, drawing from earlier timeslices if nothing is posted in the current timeslice. If the timeslice is set to All (the default), then the Min setting is ignored.

Max: Set this to control the amount of space this section takes up when there are a large number of articles that match its criteria. When there are more than the specified number of articles, a link Read More {section name} will be automatically shown at the end of the displayed list.

If you do not specify a maximum, there may be an unlimited number of articles or comments from the timeslice in this section.

Sorting



You can choose whether the sections should show content with Newest Articles First (the default), Oldest First, Alphabetical by Title, Reverse Alphabetical by Title or Random.



In the case you create a section based on a Collection, you also have the option None, which will result in sorting based on actual the sort order of the articles in the collection.

When a section Type of Discussions is chosen, four additional sort orders are available in the drop down: Last Active Thread First, Earliest Active Thread First, Most Commented-on First and Least Commented-on First.

Show Section Title



You can choose whether the section title shows Always (the default), Only if Section has Content or Never. Generally, you will keep the default to display the section title, but the ability to turn it off provides a great deal of control over the display of the section.

Display



You can use the provided checkboxes to specify whether you want the section to display any combination of Title, Details, Tags, Comments and Attachments. Note: some options may be grayed out as unavailable based on the section Type and Volume selected.

Turning all display options off can make a page stand-alone nicely on a wiki style newspage or can make a series of articles take on the appearance of a single article.

Show Add Article Link / Button



Including the Add Button encourages users with Author permissions to add to the section.

When this checkbox is checked, an Add button will be displayed as part of the section title. When clicked, the Add New Article form will be invoked and populated with such labels as are specified in the section setup.

The concept is to make it easy to create a new article that is automatically added to a particular section. The box can be unchecked to hide the button when this action does not make sense for a given section.



Additionally, it is possible to specify a template article to be loaded or a custom form to be called when the Add button is clicked. Either enter the Article ID of the template article or use the pulldown menu to select a custom form that has been installed via the Traction plug-in interface.

Advanced



ID



The ID line is optional and is required only if there is already or you are going to create a localized (language) resource for this section. In this case, you can create a corresponding section for the other language which has the same ID but a different Title and the equivalent set of content based on a label.

Subsections



Subsection links appear in sidebar if your skin settings specify that Section Links should display. They offer an easy way to drill down to a set of content that is more specific than the section will display. For example, if a section calls for articles tagged Objective, a subsection may call for the set that also have a To Do or Done tag. The sections editor lets you define subsections. Subsections are ways of partitioning sections using a search or rapid selector expression (see Introduction to the Rapid Selector Guide).

To launch the subsection editor, click Modify.



You can define subsections by typing a name and a search expression. You can add more slots for subsections by clicking the More Subsections button.



When you have finished, click OK, then apply your changes on the main page.

Currently subsections are displayed only in the left sidebar, and only if the option in Customizing Skin Settings to display sections in the sidebar is activated.



Each subsection is a link to the subset of the articles in the main section that match the search criteria. The title of the subsection is displayed in the locator after the section name, separated by a pipe "|" character, e.g.:



Add Sections from Template



This menu appears below the list of sections. It allows you to add sections from a pre-defined template (templates are setup in config files). This is a fairly advanced feature, so use it with care, or call for support if you need assistance.

If, for example, you stripped down the sections in a space and want to add back the Space Team sections (e.g. Meeting Notes, Questions To Do, and so on) you can do this by selecting the Project Team template and clicking Add.



After adding sections from a template, review the sections that filter by Tag to ensure that you have included the matching Tags in Space Setup - Tags

Front Page Specific Sections



When you click the Front Page tab in Server Setup, you can access a Edit Section form specifically for the Front Page. See Front Page Sections for more detailed information.

The Traction TeamPage server will use default sections for the Front Page unless the Use Default Sections checkbox is unchecked, at which point the Edit Section form will be shown to allow you to make modifications.



Many of the sections on the Front Page are used to collect together articles from multiple spaces. The wildcard, *, is used to denote "all spaces," so, for instance, when you look at a section with a Type of Tag for headlines in all spaces, the label syntax is "::*:headline."

Default Space Dashboard Sections



Unless otherwise specified, new Traction spaces will use the default sections specified at the Server Setup level. In Server Setup / Defaults / Space Dashboard / Content, you can uncheck the Use Default Sections checkbox to access the Edit Section form and modify the default sections that spaces use.



As indicated by the note, the modified default space sections that you create can be overridden on a space by space basis. Each space administrator can tailor a specific space's Dashboard sections to fit the needs of the people using it.

Space Dashboard Specific Sections



When a space administrator goes to Space Setup / Dashboard / Content, the Edit Section form can be used to customize the sections for the selected space. See Dashboard Sections for more detailed information.

In the example below, you see the Edit Section form for the TaskForce space. The areas in the default settings that had a {0} marker are now replaced with the TaskForce space name. Also, in the example below, the Open Objectives section is defined. It looks up articles with the Objective tag, then refines the view to only those articles that ALSO have the ToDo tag. (In this case, "i" specifies that both tags must be present together at the "item" level, that is a match will not occur if one tag is at the article level and the other is at the paragraph level or if the tags are on different paragraphs of the same article.)



Using Sections in an Article



When editing an article in the Article Editor, you can use the use the Edit Section form to define sections that can be inserted into the body of the article. See Article Sections for more detailed information.

There are two steps to the process:

  1. Clicking the Add sections link in the upper right invokes the Section Editor letting you define sections to be used in the article.
  2. You then place a section into the body of the article by using the Insert/Edit Widget icon on the toolbar and selecting Article Section.


Tip: Expert users can avoid the second step (Insert/Edit Widget) by entering the appropriate Rapid Selector link syntax into the article. The syntax is "[[/section 1]]" where the 1 refers to the first section defined using the Edit Section form. You can replace the 1 with the Section ID value that you can associate with any given section.

Using Sections in a Profile Page



The default sections for a Profile Page show articles and comments authored by the user of the profile being viewed. However, a system administrator or the user can customize the sections shown in a Profile Page as desired. See Profile Sections for more detailed information.

Email Digest Specific Sections



When you click the off the checkbox for Use Default Sections in the Digest Sections entry in the Server Setup / User Subscriptions / Email Digest tab, you can access the Edit Section form to modify the default sections used by the Email Digest. See Digest for more detailed information. This same process also applies to personal email digests defined in My Account / Subscriptions / Email Digest.

You can see in the example below, that the Headlines & News section will pick up all articles for which the Headline or News tag was added since the last digest.



Note the use of the ? wildcard in this example. The ? wildcard refers to all projects listed in Digest Projects setting which is specified in Server Setup | Defaults | Subscriptions - Digest tab. Each user may override the Digest Spaces setting in their own Personal Setup | Subscriptions - Digest tab. This is different from the * wildcard which refers to all spaces that can be read by a particular user.

The label picker accessed by clicking the Add button to the right of the labels box causes the Insert Tags dialogue to show up (see below). For sections like Headlines & News that group information from many spaces, you want to select "Current Spaces" which will use the ? wildcard (choosing All Spaces will use the * wildcard and, thus, ignore the Spaces to Include in Digest list).

If you are making or editing a section that repeats for each space group, choose "Current Space" which will not use any wildcard. If you are creating a section specifically for a space (a rare case for the digest) then choose the space itself.



Repeat this section and {0} Articles



The combination of using {0} in the name of the digest section and checking the Repeat this section box causes TeamPage to iterate over the space list, write section headings that replace {0} with the space name, and output the title and first paragraph of each article in the corresponding sections.

Digest Style Selection and Customization



While not directly tied to setting up digest sections, it is important to note that the behavior of the digest is greatly influenced by one of the settings available for customizing the digest style. When you pick a style such as Block, you can click Customize to further tailor the digest style.



Among the various options you can modify, you will find this one:



The Group by Activity setting is usually the best selection when digests include spaces that consistently have a large number of nested comments. When this setting is set to Yes, the sections you have specified are used to determine what content appears but the content is organized strictly by space rather than section.

Changing the setting to "no" will produce digests where sections are displayed as specified in the section editor (e.g. a Headlines section spanning all spaces may appear at the top of the digest - and then content for each space may appear in a section for each space).

Viewing the digest



You can test the digest by sending it now (see Server Setup - Email Tab), but that will send it to all recipients and will exclude all included articles from the next scheduled digest.

Another option is to simulate a digest view. To do this, go to your Front Page and type "/type digest_html" or "/type digest_text" into the search box. If you have a lot of content on your server, add the W or M parameter to scope to the current Week or Month: "/w type digest_html"

Filtering Email Notifications using Sections



When setting up defaults for Email Notifications at the server level or when defining this for an individual account in My Account / Subscriptions - Email tab, Traction provides the option to use sections to filter notifications. See Filter Notifications Using Sections for more detailed information.



When the Use Default Sections checkbox is unchecked, a simplified Edit Section form will be shown to allow you to customize the sections used to help filter when you receive email notifications.





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parents (1)
Doc252: Server Setup - Front Page
referenced by (2)
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references (2)
Customer2797: What's different between TeamPage Release 4.2 and 5.0, for people familiar with TeamPage?Doc176: Navigating with the Rapid Selector
Article: Doc22 (permalink)
Categories: :Doc:to do
Date: March 22, 2008; 3:46:56 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Author Name: Documentation Importer
Author ID: importer