Creating an authoring environment

You can run an authoring environment on a separate system or machine partition from your production environment.

Procedure

  1. Deploy a new environment for authoring purposes. Ensure that when the running the initdb_db2_sample.sh or initb_oracle_sample.sh script, the staging option is specified to create the schema and triggers required for a staging environment.
  2. Perform one of the following tasks:
    • If you have a production environment available:
      1. Ensure that you can connect from the HCL Commerce authoring environment node to the production database.
      2. DB2Catalog the remote production database so that it is accessible from your authoring environment.
      3. Ensure that you have the following information about your production environment available:
        • Database name

          DB2The database name must be the database name as cataloged on the authoring environment.

        • Database user name (user ID)
        • Database user password
        • Oracle Fully qualified database server host name
        • OracleDatabase server port

        You might need to provide a name for the JDBC data source that is created for the production database.

        This information is used to create a data source that is used by the quick publish function in workspaces.

    • If you do not have a production environment available, you can wait until a production environment is available and update the authoring environment with the production environment information by following the instructions in Updating the quick publish target.
  3. Configure the authoring database and the production database for use with the staging utilities.
  4. Synchronize the new, empty authoring environment instance with your production environment.
  5. Optional: Enable e-mail notification in workspaces.

    Enabling email notification in workspaces allows HCL Commerce to sent email automatically in the following situations:

    • Workspace Content Contributors receive email notification when a task they are assigned is part of a task group that is activated.
    • Task Group Approvers receive email notification when a task group for which they are an approver is ready for approval.
    • Workspace Content Contributors receive email notification if a task group approval request is rejected and their assigned tasks are reactivated.
  6. Create users and assign the users Workspace Manager, Workspace Content Contributor or Task Group Approver roles.
  7. Stop and restart the Transaction server Docker container in your authoring environment.