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Introducing data-driven tabs
Posted by Matt Rajkowski on March 16, 2016, 1:50 PM EDT
Connect allows you to build a site with directories of information. The platform comes with several pre-built profile types like People, Places, Events, Groups, Businesses, Organizations, Topics, Ideas, Accounts and more.
You have always been able to add additional profile types, though they required configuration in an XML file. It takes about 30 minutes to think through and write up a new profile type.
One of the goals of Connect 7.0 / 2016 is to have a product which doesn't require coding and XML templating to achieve basic customization of the profile types.
With the latest code, you can now specify a Tab as "data-driven" in the online Admin editor. Once this checkmark is made, the tab's landing page behaves differently. The landing page has content areas, but also inspects the tab's data and chooses different portlets to display. Portlets for content areas, adding profiles, seeing sub-categories, recent category, profiles, search, and recent activity.
As the "data-driven" tab grows with data, the landing page adapts to show just the right amount of information, with links to get users to interesting pages.
So phase 1 of data-driven tabs is complete. The next phase looks to include further customization of the tab's settings – the profile record's form, the privacy settings, and ownership.
