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Page building guide

This guide covers the essentials for building pages in HCL Connections Engagement Center.

Supported page templates

CEC (WebEngine) supports only the following two page templates:

Template Description
CEC Base Basic CEC page template without pre-configured components
CEC with Components CEC page template with pre-configured CEC components

When creating a new page, select one of these templates from the template picker.

CEC Page Templates

Supported layouts guide

For the best experience when building pages with CEC components, use only the following layouts:

Layout Type Works With
Single-Column (Full-Width) All CEC components ✅
Home Layout All CEC components ✅
Full-Row / Horizontal Featured Stories, Upcoming Events
Balanced Rectangular / Single-Square News Overview, Mega News

Available layouts

The following layouts are available in the layout picker:

  • Single-Column (Full-Width)
  • Home Layout
  • Full-Row / Horizontal
  • Balanced Rectangular / Single-Square

To view the layouts, go to Page settings and then the Layouts tab.

Layouts

Below are the supported CEC layouts shown in the layout picker:

CEC Page supported layouts

  • Single-Column (Full-Width) is recommended for all components.
  • The image below shows a Single-Column layout for the CEC Featured Stories component:

Home Layout

Important notes

  • Avoid narrow multi-column layouts. Components like Featured Stories and Upcoming Events require maximum available width — placing them in narrow columns will cause the UI to break or distort.

  • Safest default: When in doubt, always use the Single-Column layout. It works correctly with all CEC components.

  • Incompatible layouts are being phased out from the layout picker in an upcoming update.

Creating a page

  1. Turn on Edit Mode from the Action Bar
  2. In Site Manager, select a parent page
  3. Click the context menu → Create Child Page or Create Sibling Page
  4. Enter a Page Title and Friendly URL
  5. Select CEC Base or CEC with Components template
  6. Click Create Page

Adding components

After creating a page:

  1. Click Add page components and applications in the Site Toolbar

Page Components and Applications

  1. Drag and drop CEC components onto your page

CEC Components

  1. Configure each component using the content menu

Pre-configured default intranet pages

The default Intranet already includes pre-built starter pages: Homepage A, Homepage B, and Homepage C to start quickly. While these pages come pre-added to the project structure, Homepage A, Homepage B and Homepage C are provided as empty baseline templates with components but without active data. Before deploying Homepage A, B, or C as your primary landing page, ensure you configure the component settings and link your desired data sources so content displays correctly to end users.

Best practices

  • Use supported templates only — Other templates may not render CEC components correctly
  • Use full-width layouts — Narrow columns can break component display
  • Preview before publishing — Check how the page appears to end users