Adding folder support to Management Center tools

You can add folder support to any Management Center tool to provide business users with the ability to group store objects for that tool. By grouping store objects, business users can improve the organization and management of those store objects in Management Center. By default, folder support is available for promotions in the Promotions tool.

Feature Pack 6 or later Support is provided by default for grouping e-Marketing Spots, activities, customer segments, marketing content, promotions, and attribute dictionary attributes. This support includes the capability of creating, changing, and deleting folders within the Management Center Catalogs, Marketing, and Promotions tools.

Feature Pack 7 or later Support is provided by default for grouping content pages and layouts in the Commerce Composer tool. This support includes creating, changing, and deleting folders with the Commerce Composer tool.

Before you begin

Ensure that you complete the following tasks:

Install WebSphere Commerce Version 7
Install WebSphere Commerce Feature Pack 5 or later

About this task

To add folder support you must create your folder objects, and customize Management Center to display and support folders. By adding folder support to a tool, business users can associate and disassociate store objects with folders. Users, however, can associate only those store objects that are specific to a folder type as folder items within that folder. You cannot combine store objects that belong to different tools, such as promotions and attributes, as folder items in the same folder. A promotions folder can have only promotion folder items that are associated with the folder. By default WebSphere Commerce provides support for adding the following Management Center objects as folder items into folders:

Folder item types
This table documents the folder types that are supported by default in WebSphere Commerce and the object type that can be included within the folder type.
Management Center tool	Management Center object types	Supported folder types	Supported folder item types
Promotions tool	Promotion	IBM_PromotionFolder	PromotionType
Catalogs tool	Attribute	IBM_AttributeFolder	AttributeDictionaryAttributeType
Marketing tool	Activity	IBM_ActivityFolder	ActivityType
	Content	IBM_ContentFolder	MarketingContentType
	Customer Segment	IBM_CustomerSegmentFolder	MemberGroupType
	e-Marketing Spot	IBM_EMarketingSpotFolder	MarketingSpotType
Commerce Composer tool	Content pages	IBM_ContentPageFolder	PageType
Commerce Composer tool	Layouts	IBM_LayoutFolder	LayoutType

If you are customizing Management Center to support a different folder type to organize a Management Center object, do not use one of the supported folder item types. To add support for folders for a Management Center object, you must define a new folder type and folder item type that supports the object. Do not combine different types of folder items in a single folder. Only the supported folder item type displays within a folder in Management Center.

Feature Pack 5 For an example of adding folder support to a Management Center tool, see Tutorial: Creating folders in the Marketing tool. Review this tutorial for examples and addition instructions for adding folder support to a Management Center tool.

Attention: The procedure that is outlined in this tutorial is based on the folder support that is included in Feature Pack 5. This tutorial procedure is not recommended if you are on a newer feature pack level. If you are on a newer feature pack level, you are not able to group folders that are created by following this tutorial with folders that are created by using Management Center. If you create Management Center folders by using the sample object definitions included in this tutorial, delete those folders before you create folders in Management Center. For more information about folders, see Folders.

Note: Multiple language support is not available for folders. Folders displays with the name and description you specify when you are creating the folder, regardless of what language you are working in with Management Center.

Procedure

Create tool-specific folders. For information about creating folders and to understand the requirements for creating a folder in your database, see Creating promotion folders.
This step is no longer required.
Create an extended properties file to contain the text for your folders that display in the user interface. You must register your property file in a resource bundle that contains the locale-specific objects for your folder.
Define the folder primary object definition. The primary object describes a top-level business object that is independent of other objects. This primary object defines the base object from which your tool folders are derived. For more information about defining primary objects, see Defining a primary object
Define the reference definitions for your folder objects. Define the references between your folder objects and the parent folders for your folder objects to be a parent reference object definition: To define the reference between your folders and the objects that are to be included with your folders, complete one of the following tasks:
- Define the reference between your folder objects and the objects that you are including in those folders to be a collection reference object definition.
- Define the reference between your folder objects and the objects that you are including in those folders to be a reference object definition. Define the reference between your folder objects and any parent folder object that you include a folder within, to be a parent reference object definition.
For more information about defining the reference objects for a primary object, see Defining reference objects for a primary object.
Define two new list views to display your folder objects and the store objects that are associated with the folder objects. You must define one list view to list the store objects that are associated with a folder. Your second list view is to list the sub folders included within a folder. For more information about defining a list view, see Defining a list view.
Define a properties view for your folders to display your folder details. For more information about defining a properties view, see Defining a properties view for a business object
Update the top objects to display your folders in the Management Center explorer view. For more information about setting a top object in the explorer view, see Defining a top object definition in the explorer view
Create the JSP files for enabling your folder service. You must connect your Management Center user interface to your services to return folder information from your services. You must also register the JSP files in the Struts configuration. For more information about JSP files, see Working with JSP pages. For more information about creating JSP files, see Creating and registering new storefront JavaServer Pages files
Update your Management Center tool access control to provide access rights for business users of your Management Center tool. You must provide access rights to users to provide users the ability to access the folder services. Add access control policies to give a business user role access to folders from a specific tool. For more information about implementing access control, see Access control in the BOD command framework
Verify that your customization is complete. As a business user, open your Management Center tool and add and delete objects to and from your tool folders. If you can successfully manage your folder objects, your customization is successful. For an example of managing folders, see Organizing promotions with folders.