Folios

General

• a Folio:
  • Is a container used to hold other documents. It's particularly well suited to sharing groups of documents with other users.
  • Is a document in ICMS of type Folio
  • Is edited via the ICMS Web interface. Javascript is required.
  • Can be Locked against further updates
  • Can be Rendered as PDF, Xml or a zip file

• If you look at the actual native file for a folio it's actually XML. The Javascript interface interprets that and gives you a viewing/editing web page.

• It helps to think of a Folio as a real book.
  • It's a grouping of documents, like chapters in a book.
  • It is easy to look at a listing of all the documents in a folio, as you would look at a table of contents for a book.
  • It is equally simple to look at the contents of all the documents in a folio. You can export a folio to PDF, this combines all the member documents just as a book is a seamless combination of all the chapters

What Document Metadata is Saved in the Folio?

When a document is added to a folio, the folio keeps a record of some of that documents metadata fields.

• title
• last modified date
• content id
• name
• create date
• author
• doc type
• native file format (text, excel, word etc.)
• a couple of urls and ids referring to the content for that item

Be warned that Folios have some rough edges. One of them is that, a document is added to a Folio, then any of the above metadata fields are changed independently, those changes will not be reflected in the Folio.

Simple Folios

• Only holds documents
• Created via Content Management > New Folio > Simple Folio
• The Viewing/Editing interface has one panel with a row for each content item

Advanced Folios

• Holds documents and containers for documents, so it's a multilevel hierarchical structure.
• Can be created from a template
• Has an interface with a right panel (showing the tree structure for the folio) and a left panel (showing document metadata and source items).

Source Items

• The idea with source items is that you are given a way to gather a number of documents and keep them in one area of the screen while you build the folio in another area of the screen.
• The user can switch between the items you search for and your current content basket (as seen at My Content Server > My Baskets).

Folio Templates

• ICMS admins need to get involved to make a Folio Template
• Available for Advanced Folios only

Generating PDFs from Folios

• To print a folio, open up the folio in edit or view mode. In the upper right select Renderers > Download PDF rendition. There are also options to create a Zip File of the component documents or an XML rendition of the contents of the folio.
• The XML rendition will be of limited use to most Users - it just has information on the metadata of the component documents for the folio.

Editing Folios

• Folios have an edit view and a display view.
• Some areas of the ICMS give you the web viewable link of the folio available on the search results page and the the folios content info page) will bring you to the folio in view mode. Others like the Folio Icon on the search results page for a folio bring you into edit mode for the folio.
• You are able to toggle between these two states by means of the Actions dropdown on the Edit or View page for the folio
• After you are in edit mode for a folio and changes are made to the folio, you must save your changes before going to view mode. Actually, your changes are lost if you go anywhere else but the edit folio page or the popup search dialog it provides you with for adding new documents.
• If you are in edit mode for the folio there will be a header which reads "Edit Simple Folio" or "Edit Advanced Folio", and there will be a green '+' and a red 'x' icon near the top left of the page. Those icons are used to add documents to and remove documents from the folio.

Editing Advanced Folios

• To add a folder to an advanced folio, right click on the place you want to add it in the left panel and select 'Create Node'. You can name the node and give it a description in the upper right panel
• To add an item to an advanced folio, either
  • Right click on the place you want to add it in the ;eft panel and select "Insert Item by Search" if it already exists in ICMS
  • Do the above, but select 'Insert Item By Checkin' and add it to ICMS as you add it to this Folio.
  • Do the above, but select 'Create Slot'. Then highlight one of the Source Items in the bottom right panel, right click on the newly created slot, and select "Insert Selected Source Item"
  • There is a last option, to insert Hypertext. This allows you to add a URL, with a label specified by you in HTML, to the Folio.

Folio Subscriptions

• You can subscribe to a folio. This will cause the ICMS to send you emails whenever documents within the folio change.
• If you have created a folio and wish for it to change as new revisions of its constituent documents are checked in, we recommend that you create a Folio Subscription for that Folio, then update it as you are alerted to changes in its documents.
• A folio is subscribed to by going to the Content Info page for that folio and selecting Content Actions > Subscribe. You are presented with four non-exclusive options for the subscription and must press the 'subscribe' link before the action is complete.
• The folios you have subscribed to are accessed from My Content Server > My Subscriptions.

Workflow and Folios

• Folios may not behave the way you expect or desire them to with respect to workflow.
• Workflow approval applies to the folio document only, not to any of the component documents.

Security and Folios

• A folio has its own metadata. That includes the Security Group and Secure To fields.
• Users who have permission to browse a folio are allowed to see a couple of metadata items related to all documents in that folio.
  • If a User does not have permissions to access a component document of the folio he will get an error as he tries to access the content of that document.

Deciding when to use a Folio

As you consider whether your needs are best addressed by a Folio, here are some things to know about some similar objects in ICMS.

None of the three options below can match the ability of a Folio to generate a PDF/Zip file of all the member documents.

Folios vs Related Content

• RC is a parent-child relationship that can be nested arbitrarily deep
• RC is just a little bit of metadata attached to each document. There is no 'Related Content' document that is stored in ICMS for a relation
• There is nothing in ICMS which can give you a tree-like map of all documents which are directly or indirectly related to a document of interest.

Folios vs Contribution Folders

• You can make a Contribution Folder yourself
• Supports documents and folders for documents, like an Advanced Folio does.
• Documents in a Contribution Folder inherit a lot of metadata from the Contribution Folder
• Both have editing interface which are different from what is typical in ICMS. CFs can work via webdav, so you can drag and drop documents into a folder like any other file operation on your computer.
• You can traverse a tree-like structure to see the hierarchy of the folder.
• Like Folios, you will find that Contribution Folders have complicated and sometimes buggy behavior.

Folios vs Library Folders

• ICMS admins need to get involved to make a Library Folder
• Library folders are integrated tighter into ICMS - if you wish to share a group of documents with all users, this may be a factor. Library folders are accessible on everyones home screen as well as through 'Browse Content > Library Folders' in the web interface.

Known issues with Folios

• Multiselect Problems
  • One can click on a single item, shift-click to select a series of contiguous items but CANNOT option/command click to select discontiguous items.
• Insert Selected Source does not preserve HTML in the title
• Search window layout is not optimal
  • Checkbox is at the bottom, next button is at the top.
• Document Search Truncates Titles
  • When searching for Scheduling & Planning Meetings documents and adding to a folio, Barb noticed that the titles were truncated (they have dates at the end which were excluded.) Going to the folio first and searching within that interface worked fine.
• New revision causes Folio to get stuck in ArgonneEntry
  • Not sure of the cause, but some folio edits are getting stuck in the ArgonneEntry parent workflow, requiring an admin to approve them through.
• Browser quirks
  • As Folios are largely written in Javascript, a language which runs in the Users computer browser, we have encountered situations where the layout or behavior may be affected by the operating system and browser. It's not an optimal solution but when you encounter a problem with a folio, try to do the same thing from another browser. It's often the shortest past to a solution and frequently the best we can recommend as tech support for this product.