Concept of the lists of social objects provided with the social rendering feature
The social rendering feature provides a set of predefined lists view definitions and a detail view definition for forum topic details.
The lists of social objects are defined by content items of content type Social List Definition. The following lists are available after we installed IBM WebSphere Portal:
- List of Blog Posts
- List of Communities
- List of Community Events
- List of Community Forum Topics
- List of Community Blog Posts
- List of Community Content
- List of Community Files
- List of Files
- List of Forum Topics
- List of People
These list definitions define individual queries against the search service of the remote IBM Connections server. The specific queries for the individual list definitions are built based on the element data contained in those content items. In addition to the query, the content items also hold the reference to the list appearance component responsible for transforming the query result data into visual markup.
The lists generate a visual enumeration of social objects that are relevant in the specific context of a portal page. For example, these social objects can be all recent blog posts that are tagged with a specific tag. To see a detail view of a social object, a site visitor can click the link rendered for the item in the list. The process of bringing up this details view is called social object resolution. We can choose between the following options for resolving a social object that a user clicks:
- Taking the user to a portal page where the social object details are rendered by a social rendering detail view
- Taking the user to a portal page where the social object details are rendered by a IBM Connections portlet
- Taking the user to the details view for the social object in the IBM Connections user interface.
The resolution process can be controlled by various concepts described in Configure globally how social object links are resolved.
In contrast to social list view definitions, social rendering detail view definitions render detailed information about a single social object. For example, such detail information can be the full body text and the nested thread of replies for an individual forum topic. Additionally, the details view typically also renders user interfaces that allow interactions with the social object, such as form fields by which site visitors can post new replies. WebSphere Portal v8.5 provides a social rendering details view definition for forum topics named Forum Topic Details.
We can create more list and details view definitions as extensions within the IBM Digital Data Connector (DDC) for WebSphere Portal framework.
- Social object resolution
When a portal user clicks a link to an object, the portal takes the user to the details view of that object. This process is called social object resolution. For example, a user might click a specific forum topic listed in the Community Forum Topics list. In this case, the social object resolution takes the user to a portal page that provides a details view of the forum topic the user clicked. We can influence the result of the resolution the user views by setting various parameters. These parameters are described here.
Parent Work with lists of social objectsRelated concepts:
IBM Digital Data Connector (DDC) for WebSphere Portal
Configure globally how social object links are resolved