Our 10.1 release sees further improvements to our CMS/Guidelines module and makes Word and PowerPoint templates available inside our MS Office add-in.
The highlights are:
- Distribute Office templates via the Brandworkz Office Add-in
- Ability to configure blocks on CMS templates
- Addition of a new Article Block for the CMS
- Greater flexibility when managing page layouts at the individual page level
- Ability to configure padding on all blocks
- Only show anchor links in the floating navigation
Support for Word and PowerPoint Templates in the MS Office Add-in
It's well known that designers and marketing will ensure what they produce is on brand. Still, not all your colleagues have time to study the Brand Guidelines before making everyday documents such as sales presentations or meeting follow-up notes.
To help keep everyone on brand, you can now upload those documents as templates to your Brandworkz instance and distribute them via the Brandworkz Office Add-in. As well as being able to search your DAM and insert images or video without leaving MS Office. You can add tags to the templates and filter them by things like Most Used, making it easy for your end users to find what they need quickly.
For end-users to access your Word/PowerPoint templates, click “Templates” from the “Brandworkz” menu in your MS Office integration inside MS Office.
If you would like to learn more about any of our connectors, please contact your Brandworkz Account Manager or Support.
Support for configuring blocks on CMS templates
In earlier versions, when adding blocks (previously widgets) to a CMS template, it was not possible to configure or add content to them. This meant blocks had to be configured every time the template was used.
In the 10.1 release, System Administrators can configure CMS blocks and add default content on a template level, meaning your admins do not have to reconfigure the blocks each time when creating a page based on that template.
To create a template with configured blocks
- Go to Settings > CMS Templates and create a new template
- Add your block(s) to the template
- Click “Edit Content” in the bottom admin bar
- Configure your blocks and add content as you would on a CMS page
- Click Save in the top right corner of the window
- Any CMS pages created using that template will include the configuration and or content added to the template
To configure blocks on an existing template
- Go to Settings > CMS templates and select the template you want to configure
- Follow steps 3-5 above
Note that if you change blocks on an existing template or reconfigure them, any existing pages based on that template will not change. However, if you add new blocks, they will appear on existing pages.
Tip: You can use this new feature to add dummy text (e.g. lorem ipsum or help text) and placeholder images to templates, making it even easier for your content admins to create new pages.
Article block
The new Article block combines the Rich Text and Gallery blocks with additional layout options. It also automatically collapses to a vertical layout when viewed on smaller screens, meaning better-looking pages, whatever the screen size.
Page Layout options can be configured for individual CMS pages
In 10.0, we added a CMS Web Pages section to the Brand and Skinning tool where you can set options such as showing the side navigation or next and previous options on CMS pages site-wide. We have feedback that you would like different options on different pages, such as a different background colour or anchors only in the side navigation. In 10.1, you can now overrule the site-wide configuration page-by-page.
To do this, go to the page’s properties by clicking “Properties” in the bottom admin bar and expand the new “Layout Options” section.
Note: If unwanted layout changes have been made to your page, you can go back to using the global layout options configuration for your instance by clicking the “Revert to global settings” button.
Ability to configure padding and full width on all blocks
Previously, it might have been tricky to get exactly the right padding/margin between certain types of blocks on a page, leading to workarounds such as putting additional returns on the top and bottom of text content.
All (non-legacy) blocks now have identical options for configuring the padding-top/bottom/left/right so you can get precisely the right margin between blocks, so your pages look great. We have also improved how margins are calculated when viewed on smaller screens, so your pages should look good wherever they are viewed.
All blocks now have a "Full Width" toggle. Use this if you want the block's content to be the full width of the browser window instead of sticking to the size set in the "Width of content" field. You will typically do this if you want a banner or hero image at the top of the page.
Tip: We suggest you do this on the template level so new pages based on these templates are correct from the start. Remember that existing pages based on templates will not change when you change the block config on templates, so you will not affect existing pages by doing this.
Support for Navigation with Only Anchors Displayed
Previously, the Side Nav section tree option had to be activated for anchor links to be visible in the floating Side Nav menu.
Admins can now show only anchor links on the page being viewed without showing all the other pages in the section.
What are anchor links: Anchor links are on-page links which you, as the admin, would manually insert into rich text through the Link -> Anchor button on the WYSIWYG editor typically next to a sub-heading and give each one a descriptive name (note that you cannot use spaces but can use dashes or underscores).
These are useful to add to long pages as end-users can click on them in the floating nav, and the page will scroll down to the relevant section.
Other minor improvements and fixes
- For multi-language sites, the feedback to the translation admin has been improved on the import of translations from a spreadsheet. On completion of import, a results screen will now appear stating which phrases have been imported, updated, ignored or errored.
- Ability to upload supporting documents to stages on a workflow started from an Editable//Web-to-Publish Template
- UI improvements to the workflow admin.
- Stability improvements to our Getty Images connector when making large historic imports.
- Improvements to end-user messaging for SSO logins if there is already an existing disabled or deleted account that matches on login and/or email address
- Various security and functionality fixes
- Fixed issue whereby some embed links did not expire when the asset gets expired on the Brandworkz instance.
- Improved error handling and notifications on the metadata import functionality
- Fixed bug where workflow projects were not showing the workflow project name in search
- Fixed bug which prevented admins from adding group approvers to a workflow.