Customizing the Consoles

AEM provides various mechanisms to enable you to customize the consoles (and the page authoring functionality) of your authoring instance.

• Clientlibs

  Clientlibs allow you to extend the default implementation to realize new functionality, while reusing the standard functions, objects, and methods. When customizing, you can create your own clientlib under /apps. For example it can hold the code required for your custom component.

• Overlays

  Overlays are based on node definitions and allow you to overlay the standard functionality (in /libs) with your own customized functionality (in /apps). When creating an overlay a 1:1 copy of the original is not required, as the sling resource merger allows for inheritance.

These can be used in many ways to extend your AEM consoles. A small selection are covered below (at a high level).

For example, the following locations within the /libs structure can be overlaid:

• consoles (any consoles based on Granite UI pages); for example:

  • /libs/wcm/core/content

Customizing the Default View for a Console

You can customize the default view (column, card, list) for a console:

1. You can reorder the views by overlaying the required entry from under:

   /libs/wcm/core/content/sites/jcr:content/views

   The first entry will be the default.

   The nodes available correlate to the view options available:

   • column
   • card
   • list

2. For example, in a overlay for list:

   /apps/wcm/core/content/sites/jcr:content/views/list

   Define the following property:

   • Name: sling:orderBefore
   • Type: String
   • Value: column

Add New Action to the Toolbar

1. You can build your own components and include the corresponding client libraries for custom actions. For example, a Promote to Twitter action at:

   /apps/wcm/core/clientlibs/sites/js/twitter.js

   This can then be connected to a toolbar item on your console:

   /apps/<yourProject>/admin/ext/launches

   For example, in selection mode:

   content/jcr:content/body/content/header/items/selection/items/twitter

Restrict a Toolbar Action to a specific Group

1. You can use a custom rendering condition to overlay the standard action and impose specific conditions that must be fulfilled before it is rendered.

   For example, create a component to control the renderconditions according to group:

   /apps/myapp/components/renderconditions/group

2. To apply these to the Create Site action on the Sites console:

   /libs/wcm/core/content/sites

   Create the overlay:

   /apps/wcm/core/content/sites

3. Then add the rendercondition for the action:

   jcr:content/body/content/header/items/default/items/create/items/createsite/rendercondition

   Using properties on this node you can define the groups allowed to perform the specific action; for example, administrators

Customizing Columns in the List View

To customize the columns in the list view:

1. Overlay the list of available columns.

   • On the node:

     /apps/wcm/core/content/common/availablecolumns

   • Add your new columns - or remove existing ones.

   See Using Overlays (and the Sling Resource Merger) for more information.

2. Optionally:

   • If you want to plug additional data, you need to write a [PageInforProvider](https://helpx.adobe.com/experience-manager/6-4/sites/developing/using/reference-materials/javadoc/com/day/cq/wcm/api/PageInfoProvider.html) with a

     pageInfoProviderType property.

   For example, see the class/bundle attached (from GitHub) below.

3. You can now select the column in the column configurator of list view.

Filtering Resources

When using a console, a common use case is when the user must select from resources (e.g. pages, components, assets, etc.). This can take the form of a list for example from which the author must choose an item.

In order to keep the list to a reasonable size and also relevant to the use case, a filter can be implemented in the form of a custom predicate. See this article for details.

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