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Schedule and Personalize Element

The Schedule/Personalize Element, commonly referred to as the Scheduled Element, dynamically renders content for known individuals or groups using criteria you define. You can dynamically publish content on a specific date, at a specific time of day, within a specific subsite or page category, or using a variable value or browser type as criteria. You can also use links to trigger dynamic content rendering. Use the Scheduled Element to dynamically render content for one CommonSpot Element at a time. See the Note below.

To schedule the display of multiple Elements, use the Container Element.

CommonSpot also provides a way to personalize content for anonymous users based on browsing rules you define. See visitor context in the Administrator's Reference for more information.

The Scheduled Element is essentially a container or placeholder for dynamically rendered Elements.

For those Elements that render as multiple individual components - Bulleted List Element, Drop Down List of Links Element, Link Bar Element , and Multi-Section Element - you can separately schedule each sub-item.

CommonSpot offers several scheduling options. Here are a few examples of how Elements can be scheduled.

• Timeframe - To display catalog images of models in seasonal clothing - winter, spring, summer, and fall - a corresponding date range is defined for each season's image Element.
• Audience - For a corporate internet, for example, you can conditionally render Human Resource benefit information (contained in separate Text Block Elements) based on salaried or hourly employee status. For external visitors, you can display content using criteria defined for visitor context , as descibed above. This release of CommonSpot enables you to select all groups, or to conditionally render to any or all of the groups you specifically select.
• Page Categories - A destination resort displays images based on page category. An image of a chef in uniform displays for all pages in the cuisine category, while an image of chocolates on a pillow displays for pages that belong to the resort amenities category.
• Subsites/Subsite level - You can use scheduling to maintain a top-level tool bar consistently across all sites, while using subsite or subsite level criteria to display a secondary tool bar. For example, an internal corporate intranet site can conditionally render a second-level navigation bar specific to each of its departments or subsites, such as Human Resources, Research & Development, Finance, Sales & Marketing, and Customer Service.
• Browser Type - A company can opt to display certain navigational Elements to visitors using Internet Explorer and another set to visitors using Mozilla browsers. This feature can also be used to indicate whether an Element should be included in searches, or when printing the page.

Note: At most, only one of the contained Elements is rendered, even if the scheduling criteria for more than one Element are met. When the scheduling criteria for more than one Element are met, the order defined in the Edit Rendering Criteria dialog determines which Element is rendered. If the scheduling criteria for at least one of the contained Elements are not met, no Element is rendered.

You can configure the Scheduled Element to allow the selection of which Element to render to be triggered by links. To configure the Scheduled Element for this option, use the Schedule Layout Properties dialog.

In the example below, clicking the Tennis tab dynamically displays the associated tennis story. Likewise, clicking the Formula One tab dynamically displays the Formula One story. The Tab Bar Element entries Tennis and Formula One are individually linked to the scheduled Text Around an Image Elements containing the Tennis and Formula One stories.

See Link Element for more information on creating links to Scheduled Elements.

 

Related Links

Schedule Layout Properties

Define Elements to Schedule/Personalize

Scheduled Element Entry

Edit Rendering Criteria

Schedule/Personalize Element

Select Groups

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You can download PDF versions of the Content Contributor's, Administrator's, and Elements Reference documents from the support section of paperthin.com (requires login).

The following guides are available from the support site and are in the /docs/directory of your CommonSpot Server:

• Getting Started Guide
• Upgrade Guide
• Release Notes

You can also download these other guides from the support section of paperthin.com (with login):

• Developer's Guide
• Template Developer's Guide
• Shared Database Configuration Guide
• Replication vs Shared Database Guide 

Sites upgrading from versions earlier than release 6.0 should review the following (from the support section of paperthin.com - requires login):

• What's New in CommonSpot 6.0
• CommonSpot 6.0.0 Menu Quick Reference

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For technical support:

http://www.paperthin.com/support/

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