Inline Editing in WPS 6.1

Recently I was analysing the oppurtunity to utilize IBM Inline Edit mechanism given in Websphere Portal.

For example while implementing a Inline edit for List structure, we look for following features.

1.Create new content
2.Edit current content
3.Publish(Approve) content
4.Expire content
5.Delete content
6.Disable Authoring Components in Production

For any project above five operations are very basic functional needs. When started analysing we were so disapointed with the features provided by IBM.

Create Content & Approve Action

I have included the Authoring Tools component for Create content in the header of ther Menu component. This would result in rendering of button to create content. Rendering in proper we have a button in the list. On click of button well it took us to form based on the underlying authoring templeate. So far the behaviour is normal. After we will the form with values, we have been given the option to Save. Here is the problem, Upon the click of Save button the content is saved as Draft content. As we know menu component can only search published content, the the content just saved is not falling under the current search result and hence it does not appear in the rendering side. As there is no chance to render the draft content, we have no way to see Approve(Publish) button.

Workarround:

Bypass Draft. We must publish the content as soon as content is authored by clicking “Save and Approve”. (Not a better choise because all contents forced to go live)

Edit Content & Expire Content

Ok. It satisfies the core need of editing the current content.

There is no option in Authoring Tools component to render the expire button. Other way they can give it as part of Edit form. But even in edit form it fails to give option “Move to Next Workflow”.

Workarround:

For Next workflow: We have to move away from IBM inline edit and forced us to use Our own Custom implementation based on WCM API.

Delete Content

Perfectly OK. Good luck to IBM(So far we have not found issues)

Limitation to Disable Authoring Components in Production Site

Currently there is no parameter(configuration) available to stop rendering the Authoring links in production. Becaue of this Create, Edit, Delete buttons are rendered. This I feel is not a good practice

Workarround:

The quick and dirty option is to clear the reference to Authoring Tools from Menu component. Offcoure in this case we need to maintain different MenuComponent design for Authoring environment and Production environment. (We have be coutious if syndinacion is enabled, if enabled the only option is to lock the Menucomponent in Producion, so that syndication will not override locked contents). Alternatevely we can clear Authoring template and lock it.

Let’s hope future versions of WPS addresses these basic requirement.