IBM Web Content Manager integration

You can configure WebSphere Commerce to use the content management capabilities of IBM Web Content Manager. By integrating with IBM Web Content Manager, business users can use IBM Web Content Manager content libraries as repositories for WebSphere Commerce content.

This integration enhances Management Center by providing a punch-out mechanism to IBM Web Content Manager. IBM Web Content Manager provides rich text editing tools, multilingual support, content prerendering, extensive user personalization support, and more content management capabilities. Users can use the punch-out mechanism to IBM Web Content Manager to retrieve or edit content that is created within IBM Web Content Manager.

By integrating WebSphere Commerce with IBM Web Content Manager, users can retrieve and use content from IBM Web Content Manager immediately after it is created or updated. If WebSphere Commerce is integrated with IBM Web Content Manager with the web feed utility integration that was introduced in WebSphere Commerce version 7 Feature Pack 2, users must wait for content to be loaded into WebSphere Commerce before the content can be used. The punch-out integration with IBM Web Content Manager is a tighter integration that removes the need for batch process web feeds, which allows Management Center users to control the retrieval of content from IBM Web Content Manager.

With an integration with IBM Web Content Manager, all of the content for WebSphere Commerce stores can be created and managed in IBM Web Content Manager. However, users can still choose to load content into Management Center to create content for use in WebSphere Commerce. Users can select content from IBM Web Content Manager for any type of Management Center object that uses or references content. The integration with IBM Web Content Manager is available in the form of a punch-out mechanism in Management Center. With this mechanism, users can open IBM Web Content Manager in a window to select content for an object, or edit content that is associated with an object. The content does not have to be loaded into WebSphere Commerce. When the user saves the content selection or changes, the window closes and the user returns to working within Management Center. The URL for the selected or edited content displays in Management Center for the object. If the selected content is translated into multiple languages and the IBM Web Content Manager Multilingual Solution is supported, then multiple URLs are returned.

The integration between WebSphere Commerce and IBM Web Content Manager allows for single sign-on authentication between the applications. The single sign-on is handled by IBM Lightweight Third-Party Authentication (LTPA).

Benefits and capabilities

With an integration between WebSphere Commerce and IBM Web Content Manager, users can gain the following capabilities:

All content necessary for WebSphere Commerce stores can be created and managed with a single application (IBM Web Content Manager).
Management Center users can open IBM Web Content Manager in a window to select content to associate with a Management Center object.
Management Center users can open IBM Web Content Manager in a window to edit content that is associated with a Management Center object.
IBM Web Content Manager users can create and manage content libraries specifically for the content that Management Center users can access through the integration. If your site supports multiple stores, users can create content libraries that are specific to a WebSphere Commerce store.
The IBM Web Content Manager Multilingual Solution is supported by the integration. When this solution is configured, Management Center users can retrieve or edit content for multiple languages.
The single sign-on configuration automatically provides the user authentication between the applications. Management Center users can open IBM Web Content Manager without manually logging in to it.
Management Center users who are working in IBM Web Content Manager through the punch-out window can preview content with IBM Web Content Manager preview before the user returns to working within Management Center.
Management Center users can preview the selected or edited content within Management Center with store preview. Image content from IBM Web Content Manager can also display for Management Center objects in list or properties views.

Considerations

Users cannot create content through the punch-out window. Users must open IBM Web Content Manager directly to create content. Users can only select or edit content for an object through the punch-out window.
The integration between the two applications must be enabled and configured separately for each WebSphere Commerce store that is to support the use of content from IBM Web Content Manager.
Content approval processes in each application are not connected. IBM Web Content Manager users and administrators must ensure that the content that is accessible through the integration contain only approved content.
A user who is working within IBM Web Content Manager can edit or delete content that is used on a WebSphere Commerce store page. Users in WebSphere Commerce receive no notification that the content that is being retrieved for a store page is edited or deleted.
The content that is managed and retrieved from IBM Web Content Manager is not enabled for workspaces. The integration does not affect how a user works within a workspace. The workflow processes in each application are independent of the other. When a Management Center user is working within a workspace and locks a Management Center object, users in IBM Web Content Manager can still edit the content that is associated with the Management Center object. When a user opens IBM Web Content Manager through the window while working within a workspace, any changes that are made to content are saved immediately. The content changes for all objects that use the content while the user is still working in the workspace.
The content that is retrieved from IBM Web Content Manager is not incrementally indexed by WebSphere Commerce search. The content link metadata can be indexed by using the Web Crawler utility for WebSphere Commerce search.

Integration architecture

The integration between WebSphere Commerce and IBM Web Content Manager allows business users to manage content on a staging environment. The integration uses an LDAP server to synchronize user authentication between both applications. This managed content is then published to the production environment, where the content can display on the storefront.

The following diagram illustrates the recommended topology setup for the integration.

Architecture setup for WebSphere Commerce and IBM Web Content Manager integration. — Figure 1: Recommended integration setup. The recommended setup includes both applications deployed in the staging environment with only WebSphere Commerce deployed in the production environment.

In this setup, each application exists on its own WebSphere Application Server within the staging environment. User authentication information for both applications is shared through an LDAP server in the staging environment. In this setup content is created and managed in the staging environment within IBM Web Content Manager. Management Center users can then open IBM Web Content Manager through the punch-out mechanism to edit content or to retrieve links to content and associate the links to Management Center objects. IBM Web Content Manager returns content to WebSphere Commerce as a web content link token identifier. This link is used to identify the relative path of the linked content. This link can include extra metadata that is appended to the relative path. This 'URI' token allows IBM Web Content Manager to identify the requests that it receives from WebSphere Commerce. The web content link displays in the format

relative_path?uuid=[uuid]&renderType=[content | resource | link]&mimeType=[mime-type of resource type only]

Each web content item can be identified by this web content link. The link stores enough information for IBM Web Content Manager to identify a request for content.

When users create or edit content in IBM Web Content Manager, the content is persisted to the database on the IBM Web Content Manager authoring server. Within WebSphere Commerce, the URL links to the content in IBM Web Content Manager are stored in the database on the WebSphere Commerce staging server. Content is then published from the IBM Web Content Manager authoring server to the WebSphere Commerce production environment servers. WebSphere Commerce uses the stagingprop utility to propagate the objects that contain the URL links to the IBM Web Content Manager content to the production environment database. The content can then be published for display on the storefront.

The content can be prerendered for deployment to the WebSphere Commerce production server. When the wcst:getContent and wcst:resolveContentURL tags retrieve content, the content is already rendered. For more information about prerendering the content, see Publishing prerendered content from IBM Web Content Manager.

Integration extension points

The wcst:getContent JSTL tag is used on store pages to retrieve IBM Web Content Manager content. For each request that retrieves content, the wcst:getContent tag is used. To reduce any performance impact from repeating the process to retrieve content, the wcst:getContent tag has a command that can be cached. For more information about this tag, caching the command for this tag, and invalidating embedded content that is retrieved with this tag, see Get content tag for retrieving externally managed content.

The wcst:resolveContentURL JSTL tag is used on store pages to convert the URLs that are specified in Management Center for content from IBM Web Content Manager. The content URLs must be converted to URLs that are valid for the store page where the content is to display. For more information, see Resolving content URLs to an external system

The implementation classes for the wcst:getContent and wcst:resolveContentURL tags can be overwritten with custom classes for integrating with a different content management system.

Store developers can customize Management Center to add punch-out mechanisms for retrieving content for custom Management Center object. Developers can use the code pattern for an existing punch-out mechanism to model the code for the punch-out mechanisms for custom Management Center objects.