Getting Started

2 - Configure Nuxeo Platform

Updated: March 18, 2024

This tutorial introduces you to a few important aspects of Nuxeo Studio so that you can take advantage of this great product as quickly as possible.

Introduction

BigCorp has a very simple workflow on a BCContract document type, called BCContractCancel_WF, allowing any BigCorp employee to cancel a contract. Once launched, the request will pass through a manager to confirm the cancellation.

BigCorp needs a new feature added to this workflow: have someone from Accounting specify the amount to refund to the client, with a full refund automatically granted to cancellations that occur within 10 days of signing.

In the steps below, we will show you how to add custom schemas, automation chains and workflow steps to fulfill this feature request.

Setting Up

First, we'll set up the Nuxeo Platform so it's ready for you to configure.

Nuxeo Platform

DOWNLOAD AND REGISTER THE NUXEO PLATFORM

  1. Download Nuxeo Platform and unzip the archive.

  2. Start Nuxeo Server:

MAC OS / Linux

$ chmod +x ./bin/nuxeoctl
$ ./bin/nuxeoctl start

Windows

> .\bin\nuxeoctl.bat start

Wizard

  1. Open Chrome or Firefox and navigate to http://NUXEO_SERVER/nuxeo.

  2. Follow the steps in Nuxeo Platform Wizard to complete the installation.

  3. Use your Nuxeo Online Services credentials to register your instance. If you don't have a NOS account yet, you can sign up for your 30-day free trial through the wizard.

  4. Be sure to select the addons needed for this Tutorial:

    • DAM
    • WEB UI
  5. The server will restart at the end. While you're waiting for your server to restart, install Nuxeo Dev Tools for Chrome or Firefox.

Template

INSTALL THE GETTING STARTED TEMPLATE

  1. Log into Nuxeo Platform with the credentials Administrator / Administrator.

  2. Open Nuxeo Dev Tools and under Useful Links, click on Go To Studio Project.

  3. Log into Studio with your NOS credentials.

  4. Under the Configuration menu in Studio, select External Templates and install the Nuxeo Training: Getting Started template by clicking on Import this package.

  5. Under the Application Definition menu in Studio, in Packages to Install, add Nuxeo DAM.

  6. From Nuxeo Platform, open Nuxeo Dev Tools again and click the Hot Reload button to update your instance with configurations from the template.

    You must have Administrator access and Dev Mode should be activated to use the hot reload.

Users and Groups

CREATE SAMPLE USERS

  1. Click on Administration Administration, then Users & Groups.

  2. Click on New to create two new Users, Jon Doe and Jane Smith, setting passwords that you'll remember.

  3. Create a Group, managers and add Jane Smith to the group, then create a group accounting and add Jon Doe.

Custom Documents

CREATE SAMPLE DOCUMENTS

Nuxeo Studio allows you to create your own document types and customize the metadata for each one. Let's take a look at one of the customized document types that we created for this tutorial.

  1. Click on Browse Browse and select Domain > Workspaces in the drawer panel from the side menu.

  2. Click on the Create button and create a workspace named BigCorp.

  3. Click on again to create a BC Portfolio with the following metadata:

Title Generic Company
Company Size (Select Medium)
Company Industry (Select Information Technology)
First Name Bob
Last Name Jones
Tel 8765432
Email [email protected]
Upload Upload a logo of your choice!
  1. On the Permissions tab, give both groups the Read & Write permission on this document.

  2. From within your created portfolio, click again. You'll notice that the only document we can create in a BC Portfolio is BC Contract.

To modify this constraint, under the Configuration menu in Studio, select Content Model > Document Types > BC Portfolio. You can then add other document types to the Accepted Children Types on the Definition tab.

  1. Create a contract with the following metadata:
Title GC Contract 1
Type (Select Fixed fee contract)
Contract Owner (Select Jon Doe)
Signature Date February 28, 2017
Start Date March 15, 2017
Expiration Date March 15, 2018
Amount 25000

You should have something that looks like this:

BC Portfolio with BC Contract
BC Portfolio with BC Contract

Now we can tinker with our Workflow!

Schemas

CONFIGURE A NEW FIELD ON A CUSTOM DOCUMENT

First we'll need to add a metadatum to our schema to represent the amount to be refunded.

  1. In Studio, under the Configuration menu, select Content Model > Document Types > BCContract, then click on the Schema tab.

  2. Add a new field to the schema: refundAmount as a Floating point.

This field is directly related to the BC Contract document type, but if you want to create more general properties to be shared with other document types you can add them to a separate schema (Configuration > Content Model > Schemas), or create your own.

  1. Save your changes and click on the Designer button.

  2. Go to Local Types > BCCONTRACT and drag and drop the new property refundAmount from Catalog in the right menu to the view layout, then save.

Using the code editor , you can drag and drop the property into a Polymer dom-if template. The one we've created will only appear in the document view layout if the contract has been cancelled.

<template is="dom-if" if="[[document.properties.bccontract:cancelled]]">
  <div role="widget">
    <label>Refund Amount</label>
    <div>[[document.properties.bccontract:refundAmount]]</div>
  </div>
  <div role="widget">
    <nuxeo-tag class="cancelled">Cancelled</nuxeo-tag>
  </div>
  <div role="widget">
    <label>Cancellation Date</label>
    <div>[[formatDate(document.properties.bccontract:cancellationDate)]]</div>
  </div>
  <div role="widget">
    <label>Refund Amount</label>
    <div>€ [[document.properties.bccontract:refundAmount]]</div>
  </div>
</template>

Automation Chains

CREATE A SIMPLE AUTOMATION CHAIN

Now let's create two simple automation chains to handle each refund case.

  1. In Studio under Automation > Automation Chains, click on New to create a new automation chain, BCContract_CancelFullRefund_AC.

  2. Drag and drop the Document > Document.SetProperty operation to the chain.

  3. Reference the property to be set using the XPath, bccontract:refundAmount.

  4. Reference the original contract amount (@{Document.getProperty("bcsalescommon:amount")}) as the value in order to perform a full refund.

  5. Save your automation chain, then create another, BCContract_CancelPartialRefund_AC. This time instead of the full amount, we'll reference a workflow variable, @{WorkflowVariables["refundAmount"]} which we'll declare in the next step.

Workflows

CONFIGURE A WORKFLOW

  1. Under Workflow > Process Definitions, select BCContractCancel_WF.

  2. On the Variables tab, add refundAmount as a Floating Point value.

  3. On the Graph tab, under the Automated tasks menu, drag and drop a Node to the graph area, then click to edit it.

  4. Entitle the node, Check Signature Date.

  5. On the Transitions tab, add the transition refundFull. We only want to run this transition if the contract was signed 10 or fewer days ago, so we'll add an expression to evaluate that condition:

    (CurrentDate.time - Fn.calendar(Document["bccontract:signatureDate"]).time) <= 864000000
    
  6. Select the BCContract_CancelFullRefund_AC automation chain for this transition.

  7. Create a second transition, refundPartial with a condition that checks for contracts more than 10 days ago, then save your node definition.

  8. From the User Tasks menu, create a Simple Task entitled Enter Refund Amount.

  9. BigCorp wants all partial refund amounts to be determined by someone on their accounting team, so we'll add group:accounting to the field Assignees.

  10. On the Variables tab, ensure that the refundAmount variable is editable in this task.

  11. On the Transitions tab, add a confirmRefund button, then link the confirm button to the BCContract_CancelPartialRefund_AC automation chain.

  12. Finally, reorganize the nodes and transitions to implement our new logic, and save. You should have something like this:

workflow
workflow

Task Layouts

CONFIGURE THE DIALOG FOR EACH TASK

A few final touches to customize user interaction with our workflow.

  1. In Designer, go to UI > Layouts to open up our workflow layouts.

  2. Click on the Enter Refund Amount task layout to configure it.

  3. From the catalog, select task > variables > refundAmount : double > edit to add the input widget, then save.

Return to Nuxeo Platform and perform another hot reload to deploy all your changes. Try creating documents with different signature dates and launching the Cancel Contract process from each one. You will have to log in as the other users you've created in order to complete all the tasks.

Start Process
Start Process

BigCorp wants to personalize a Search form in order to perform fulltext searches on contracts only and filter the results by size (amount).

Page Providers

CREATE A PAGE PROVIDER FOR A CUSTOM DOCUMENT

  1. In Studio, select Page Providers, then New.

  2. We'll give our page provider the ID contract. To the existing query filter, we'll add:

AND ecm:primaryType = 'BCContract'

which will filter our custom document type, BCContract.

You can add to the query filter to further tailor your search results. Try filtering out contracts that haven't been cancelled!

  1. Under Predicates, click Add. Click on Edit binding and select schema:system > fulltext.

  2. Next to Aggregates, click Add and select Range from the proposed Aggregate Types.

  3. Bind the bcsalescommon:amount field to the Aggregate, then add some ranges. For example:

    Label From To
    Basic (up to €1,000) 0 1,000
    Silver (€1,001 - 5,000) 1,001 5,000
    Gold (€5,001 +) 5,001
  4. Save your Page Provider.

Search Drawer

CUSTOMIZE A SEARCH

In Designer, go to UI > Layouts > Page Providers, select contract and open form to configure the form layout.

  1. Drag the search elements from the menu on the right into the form and modify the labels as needed.

  2. Then open results and drag columns from the menu on the right to customize your search results layout.

  3. From the UI menu, select Left Menu Items and hover over to select the Search drawer. Then fill in the form:

Name Contract
Available enabled
Label Contract Search
Icon Select an icon of your choice.
Order Enter a number to indicate the icon's position in the left menu.
provider contract
schemas dublincore, bcsalescommon, bccontract
search-name contract
auto enabled
  1. Finally, select Translations to modify the range labels. Following our previous example:
{
  "label.ui.aggregate.from_0_to_1000":"Basic (up to €1,000)",
  "label.ui.aggregate.from_1001_to_5000":"Silver (€1,000 - 5,000)",
  "label.ui.aggregate.from_5001":"Gold (€5,000 +)"
}

Return to Nuxeo Platform, perform a hot reload and your customized search should be available. Create a few contracts and test your new Search.

Try customizing your search to filter contract types or owners, then try modifying the columns in your search results layout in order to display more relevant contract information.

Branding

By now, I'm sure you've noticed our custom login page with the ever-conspicuous Big Corp logo. Not a fan? No problem! Let's modify the background image.

Login Page

CUSTOMIZE THE LOGIN PAGE

  1. In Studio, select Branding from the Configuration menu, then New. Enter a name for your theme.

  2. On the tab Login Page, select a background image or a background colors that matches your company's color scheme.

  3. Select a logo to be displayed within the Login box.

  4. Save, hot reload your project and log out of your Nuxeo instance to see the changes.

Our teams are working round the clock to improve the themes and styling of Web UI so that you can apply your own branding. Check in again soon to see the improvements we've made and to further customize your Nuxeo application.