Working with Content

Cinnamon provides a simple content management module to provide the capability to add textual and formatted (Microsoft Word) content to Cinnamon reports. Larger Cinnamon-installations are also integrating with typical commercial Content Management Systems (CMS) to allow for more sophisticated content editing and content reuse with other applications outside reporting.

What is a Content Type

Content types are used to manage cohesive content versions

for multiple validity date ranges
for multiple languages
expressed as title, (rich text) summary and attachment (mostly Microsoft Word files)

Managing Content Types

Cinnamon allows to

Search for report types by id, name or when activated search in the content versions (excluding attachments)
Create new or edit existing content types

Managing Content Versions

Cinnamon allows to

Add content versions to existing content types by providing a new validity period (consisting of validFrom and validTo dates). If the new version’s validity period is overlapping the previous content version’s period, the validTo date of the previous version is shortened to the day before the validFrom date of the new version
Add language-specific content to a content version. For each language the following information can be provided
- Title: plain text, should typically fit on a single line (or a few lines)
- Summary: plain text or rich text, can be filling multiple paragraph. A subset of html-tags are supported in online and via a mapping (see Richtext Styles ) also in word reporting
  - h1: title heading
  - h2: subtitle heading
  - h3: heading
  - p: paragraph
  - ul: un-ordered list
  - ol: ordered list
  - li: list item (requires a list parent)
  - b/strong: strong (renders bold)
  - em: emphasis (renders italic, nesting not supported)
  - br: line break
  - u: underline (not recommended, confuses users with link)
  - i: idiomatic text (renders italic)
- Attachment: Microsoft Word file that can be embedded together with title and summary into the final word/pdf report

Bulk Upload of Content

To upload or maintain a large amount of content types, the CM module allows to bulk upload content via a specific Excel file.

File format

The file must have the following structure

This file allows to specify a series of content versions

for multiple content types (contentTypeId)
optionally provide portfolioId and owner
each for a single validity period (validFrom, validTo - can be left empty)
providing a title and (optionally) a summary for multiple languages (columns named en.title, de.summary etc.)

Use this sample upload template:

CM Bulk Upload Template.xlsx

Upload

The upload will

automatically create new content type when required (owner and portfolioId are optional)
create or update the corresponding content versions
delete any language that is not provided in the upload (empty title is considered a missing language)
automatically “close” the validity period of an existing content version with no validTo specified

In more detail, the upload differentiates between uploading to the latest version (there is no newer version given by the validFrom dates) from any of the non-latest versions:

if the upload affects any non-latest version, the upload has to exactly match validFrom and validTo dates to update the contents.
if the upload affects the latest version, then
- if upload.validFrom is less or equal to latest.validFrom, the latest version’s content is replaced. Hints:
  - validTo date can also be changed (prolonged or shortened)
  - if validFrom is less, that there still can't be an overlap in validity periods with any non-latest versions due to rule 1 above
- if upload.validFrom > latest.validFrom, a new version is created and the latest.validTo is automatically set to upload.validFrom - 1 day

The upload does not support

altering content types (change portfolioId or owner)
creating content versions with overlapping periods
creating a content version in a language but with an empty title

Bulk-upload of attachments

each language can have an additional column hasAttachments(e.g. en.hasAttachments) to signal that an attachment is provided for this content type and language. Value should be set to yes or left empty (if no content should be uploaded).
attachment files are named according to a standard, e.g. contentType_validFrom_validTo_language
a zip file should be uploaded that contains the excel file plus individual attachment files

Additional features

The bulk upload

shows it’s progress while uploading (e.g. 1 out of 20)
generates a text-based log file containing all actions triggered as well as warnings and errors (e.g. failed upload of attachment)

Known Issues

In some solutions there is a size restriction on the contentVersion attachments. This threshold is solution-dependent.