Tailoring the Staff site
You can tailor many aspects of your out-of-the-box Staff site without worrying that your changes will be overwritten on upgrade. Items that will be overwritten during an upgrade that you want to tailor can be copied and any needed modifications made to the copy.
There is typically no need to copy the Staff site. In most cases, you can use the out-of-the-box Staff site and tailor it to your specific needs.
Items saved at upgrade | Items overwritten at upgrade |
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The Community, Membership, Fundraising, Events, and Commerce navigation items in the Staff site offer a quick-view dashboard of information pertaining to the navigation item. The out-of-the-box dashboards are built with content items, queries, and alerts.
To customize the dashboard so it is unique to your organization, you must first make a copy of the dashboard (@/iCore/Staff_Dashboards), then paste it in a Shared Content folder. The dashboards were designed to visually look similar, but contain different information specific to the featured area.
Several areas of the out-of-the-box dashboards contain "Top" queries. For example, the Top products or Top customers in the image above. These areas are limited to show a maximum result of ten, but can be easily modified to show a different top ten. From the Top products tab, select Revenue. The list is now reordered to show the products with the lowest generated revenue.
Some tabs allow you to select an entirely different query to display.
Click the Top customers tab. From the Select a query drop-down, choose a different list of Top customers to display.
To add queries to this drop-down, do the following:
- Copy the query you want to add to the drop-down.
- Navigate to $/Samples/Dashboards and open the appropriate dashboard folder.
- Locate the folder with the same title as the Select a query drop-down. For this example, the folder is Top customers ($/Samples/Dashboards/Commerce/Product Sales/Top customers).
- Paste the query into the folder.
Note: If the Select a query drop-down is not on the out-of-the-box tab, no other queries can be added to that tab.
Warning!
Do not modify a system query. Make a copy of the query and apply the changes to the copy. Any system query that is modified will be overwritten on an upgrade.
If you are licensed appropriately, you also have the ability to modify the dashboard alerts. To learn more about modifying alerts, see Displaying automated alerts.
The navigation items for these top-level dashboards use default shortcuts to point to the dashboard content records. If you want to edit one of these dashboards, you can copy and modify the existing content record or create a new content record and edit the shortcut to use your version of the content.
After an upgrade to a new version of iMIS, the dashboard navigation will continue to use your new content since shortcuts that you can edit are not overwritten.
This example describes the process of updating the Commerce dashboard by editing its shortcut, StaffCommerceLanding, to use your tailored version of the dashboard.
- In the Staff site, go to RiSE > Page Builder > Manage content.
- Navigate to @/iCore/Staff_Dashboards.
- Open and edit the Commerce Dashboard content record as needed.
- Click Save As and select a location in the Shared Content folder. You can rename the content if desired.
- Save & Publish the modified content record.
- To edit the StaffCommerceLanding shortcut, go to RiSE > Site Builder > Manage shortcuts.
- Find and edit the StaffCommerceLanding shortcut for All Sites.
- Select your version of the content record as the URL or Content Record used by the shortcut.
- Save the shortcut.
- Next, you must republish the dashboard sitemap:
- Navigate to RiSE > Site Builder > Manage sitemaps.
- Expand Commerce, then select Dashboard.
- Click Publish.
Note: If you prefer, you can create a new content record instead of modifying the existing content.
New navigation items that you create are not overwritten during an upgrade. To tailor the navigation on your website, create new navigation items that point to the correct content records.
Note: If a new navigation item is nested under a system navigation item and the system navigation item is updated, the new navigation item may be affected by this change.
It is important to note that out-of-the-box navigation items, however, may be overwritten on upgrade.
Shortcuts that you can edit are not overwritten during an upgrade. Core content navigation items, however, are overwritten on upgrade. To tailor certain system content on your website, you can make a copy of the content and simply point existing shortcuts to the new content records. For example, several key Staff site navigation items use shortcuts, so you can point to tailored versions of Staff site pages by changing which content record the shortcuts use.
Before editing out-of-the box shortcuts, you should review the shortcut descriptions to identify system content which uses a shortcut. Examples include the account pages (including the staff account page), the staff event dashboard for a specific event, and the content used when adding a contact from various contexts. The majority of the shortcuts used in the Staff site are listed as All Sites shortcuts.
You can edit the following Staff site shortcuts which are used by system navigation items:
Navigation | Shortcut |
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Community > Dashboard | StaffCommunityLanding |
Community > Find contacts | StaffFindContacts |
Community > Add contact | StaffAddContact |
Membership > Dashboard | StaffMembershipLanding |
Fundraising > Dashboard | StaffFundraisingLanding |
Events > Dashboard | StaffEventsLanding |
Events > Find events | StaffFindEvents |
Commerce > Dashboard | StaffCommerceLanding |
Commerce > Advanced Accounting Console | AdvancedAccountingConsole |
New shortcuts that you create are also preserved during an upgrade.
Note: Non-editable shortcuts, such as the ones used for the Member site, may be overwritten on upgrade.
For example, the Print Info button on the staff account page, which displays a printable SSRS report with account information, uses the PrintProfile shortcut by default. If you edit the PrintProfile shortcut, so that it points to your tailored content (in the Shared Content folder), this change will not be overwritten during an upgrade. After the upgrade, clicking the Print Info button will still send users to the content you configured the shortcut to use.
Queries that are provided out-of-the-box may be overwritten during an upgrade. If you want to tailor an existing query, you should copy it and modify the copy. Copied queries are preserved during an upgrade.
All content records saved in Core Content folders are subject to being overwritten during an upgrade. Any content records saved in the Shared Content folders, however, will not be overwritten.
If you want to tailor an out-of-the-box content record, you should copy it, modify the copy, and save it in the Shared Content folder. You can then point navigation items or shortcuts to your version of the content. Be aware, however, that out-of-the-box navigation items may be overwritten on upgrade.
New content records created by your organization should always be saved in the Shared Content folder.
For specific information about tailoring the staff account page, see Tailoring the staff account page.
When a staff user views an event in iMIS, they see an event-specific console that includes Showcase, Dashboard, Registrants, and Questions tabs. You may want to configure these tabs to use tailored content or to add or remove tabs. By default the event-specific console uses the Event Dashboard content record (located at @/iCore/Staff_Dashboards/Specific_Event). This content record contains a Content Collection Organizer content item that controls the four default tabs.
Any changes you make to the Event Dashboard content record will affect every event page; the content is not specific to a certain event. After you copy and modify the content record, you must also update the EventDashboard shortcut to point to your version of the content.
- In the Staff site, go to RiSE > Page Builder > Manage content.
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If you want to modify the content that displays in one or more of the tabs in the event-specific console, create new content records for the tabs. You may want to copy and modify the default content records for the tab. Save the copied content records in the Shared Content folder.
- Default content records located at @/iCore/Events:
- The Showcase tab uses the Event Display content record
- Default content records located at @/iCore/Staff_Dashboards/Specific_Event:
- The Dashboard tab uses the Event Detail content record
- The Registrants tab uses the Event Roster content record
- The Questions tab uses the Event Questions content record
- Default content records located at @/iCore/Events:
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Navigate to @/iCore/Staff_Dashboards/Specific_Event and open the Event Dashboard content record.
- Configure the Content Collection Organizer content item (titled Event Dashboard by default).
- For each tab, you can select your content as the Content to display.
- If needed, add new tabs and select your content as the Content to display.
- Click Save As and select a location in the Shared Content folder. You can rename the content if desired.
- Save and publish the new content.
- To edit the EventDashboard shortcut, go to Rise > Site Builder > Manage shortcuts.
- Find and edit the EventDashboard shortcut for All Sites.
- Select your version of the content record as the URL or Content Record pointed to by the shortcut.
- Save the shortcut.
When you upgrade to a new release of iMIS, you will receive the new content, such as updates to core content records and new queries, for the release. It is strongly recommended that you review this new content.
- If you have tailored shortcuts and navigation items to point to your own content, you may not see the updates to the system content that these items initially accessed. Since you may want to incorporate some of these new features or enhancements into your Staff site, you should review the core content records to which the shortcuts and navigation items originally pointed.
- If you have copied an item, such as a query or core content record, and modified the copy, you should review the original item in case it has enhancements that you want to use in your copy.