Configure a CMF Topic

Actor: Site Manager

After you have created a Topic, you need to define search criteria for the Topic so that visitors will see an appropriate virtual contents list when they view the Topic. By default no search criteria are defined, which means that the virtual contents list of the Topic will include all content in the site content catalog.

To begin defining the search criteria for a Topic, visit the Topic in your Web browser and click the "Criteria" link in the action box. This will bring up the "Topic Criteria" form. This form is made up of two parts. The top part of the form shows the search criteria already defined for the Topic, and allows you to change or delete existing criteria. The bottom of the form allows you to add new criteria.

Let's look at adding new criteria first. At the bottom of the form are two drop-down lists:

• Field Id -- This field allows you select the content attribute to which the search criterion applies. This drop-down includes all of the standard metadata attributes of content objects, as well as "Searchable Text". If you select "Searchable Text" the criteria will be applied against the full text of content objects on the site.
• Criteria Type -- The type of the value to search for in the search criterion. Options for this field are:
  • String Criterion -- The value to search for is a string.
  • Integer Criteron -- The value to search for is an integer. This may be used to match against integer content attributes.
  • List Criterion -- Match against the selected attribute using a sequence of (string) values. When using a list criterion, an "OR" search is performed, matching content where the selected field matches any of the specified values.
  • Friendly Date -- Match against the selected attribute using a date rule (such as "less than 10 days old"). This option is useful for providing views of what's new on the site. This criterion type may only be applied against date typed content attributes (such as created, modified or effective).

Once you have selected the field id and criterion type, click the "Add" button to add the search criterion. The new criterion will now appear at the top of the form along with any other criteria that you have already added.

After you have added a criterion, you can provide the value or values to be used in the search in the "Value" field of the criterion. For string, criterion, simply enter the value to search for in the text box provided. For integer criterion, you may enter a value as well as select a modifier (minimum, maximum, or both, meaning exact match).

For list criterion, enter each of the values to search for (one per line) in the textbox for that criterion.

For "friendly date" criterion, compose the appropriate search rule using the drop-down lists provided. Remember that the friendly date search constrains matches based on this rule relative to the time the search is performed. For example, if you specify "At the most: 5 days old" for a date criterion against the "modified" attribute of content objects, the Topic will always contain those content objects modified within the last five days, measuring from the time the Topic is being viewed.

You may define any number of criteria for a Topic, which are applied together (as an "AND" search) to constrain the virtual contents of the Topic. Remember that if you selected "Acquire criteria from parent" on the edit form for the Topic, the criteria of your Topic will also be ANDed with the criteria of containing Topic to produce the contents.

When you are finished adding or changing the values for your defined criteria, click the "Save Changes" button to save your changes. If you want to remove one or more criteria, select the checkbox to the left of the criteria you wish to delete and click the "Delete selected" button.