What's new for content authors in HCL Digital Experience 8.5

HCL Digital Experience 8.5 includes new capabilities for content authors to make content creation easier.

Enhanced authoring user interface

Use the new integrated site toolbar to quickly create and edit content. Within the new site toolbar, you can drag content to the page you are editing.

You can associate vanity URLs with portal pages and labels. Vanity URLs are short URLs that people can easily remember. They are shorter than full HCL Portal URLs. They are sometimes also called marketing URLs. You can publish vanity URLs for marketing campaigns through different channels, such as email or print. This way, you can use vanity URLs to direct customers to a specific portal page or content item. Interested site visitors who want to view your campaign can then remember or copy the short vanity URL and type it into the browser address field.

You can now add social content from external sources to your page.

You can integrate third-party content on your site with web dock application portlets.

Page editors can integrate social content in the context of portal pages.

Targeted content

Targeted content matches the content that displays in a spot to the site visitor that views the spot. Content authors do not need IT experience to configure a spot on a page to show targeted content. The administrator creates profiler rules for the content authoring and marketing team in the personalization area of the site. The profiles that are created in the profiler rules appear as segments when you configure your spot. Specifically, the segment name that is displayed in the UI matches the label that is specified for the profiler rule. Then, the content author uses the Targeted Content selection in the Configure Spot menu to map content to segments.

Digital Data Connector

Use the new Digital Data Connector (DDC) for HCL Portal to integrate data from external data sources on portal pages by using HCL Web Content Manager presentation components. With Digital Data Connector, content authors and designers can use Web Content Manager presentation components to generate the web page markup for external data.

Syndication status

A new information window in the authoring portlet user interface that displays the current syndication status for each item. Users can determine whether an item is synchronized between the syndicator and subscriber, pending syndication, failed, or configured to be syndicated.

Information mode and user assistance

Information mode displays more inline information, examples, and hovers help in the user interface, such as the site toolbar. Information mode gives you more assistance when you need it. After you are comfortable and understand the user interface, you can turn off information mode. Information mode is a global setting. From the site toolbar, you can turn it on and off to suit your needs. You can now view online help that is specific to content authors. Click Learn More links or the question mark icon to find help that is specific to that topic.