We’re working on adding better support for jQuery and JQuery UI in the next version of the Adam.JSGenerator library, but there’s nothing that keeps you from adding your extensions to make your expressions more readable and maintainable.

For example, if we were to want support for a particular jQuery UI function today, it’s simply a matter of adding an extension method to your application, since most jQuery and jQuery UI functions are calls on a jQuery object, that can come from any sort of expression, be it a call to jQuery itself, a set stored in a variable, passed as a parameter, or the result of another jQuery/jQuery UI call (called chaining).

So what do we do?

We are proud to announce the release of the new ADAM SharePoint Connector 3, redesigned to integrate seamlessly with Microsoft SharePoint 2010.

The new Connector closes the gap between Microsoft SharePoint and the ADAM Engine. Rather than straddling the two systems, SharePoint Connector has been built right into the heart of SharePoint so users never leave their familiar comfort zone when they want to access ADAM-stored digital assets.

Using ADAM SharePoint Connector, your familiar Microsoft SharePoint workspace becomes the viewer for all your files of any type, including graphics, video, Adobe® InDesign®, etc.
Record searching, browsing, viewing, editing and downloading are easily accessible, while maintaining the granular security as set up in ADAM: only the right people see the right assets.

A few weeks ago we received the following request from one of our partners:

We would like to create a table with icons in the headers of the columns. It would be interesting to see a blog post showing some kind of custom dev similar to that. I have seen the blog entry of adding new columns to a table, but those cells were text cells. I suppose adding an inline image in a cell is a bit more complex.

We always enjoy a challenge, so we decided to try this out. Consider the before and after screenshots pictured below. On the left, a product item group is shown that uses regular field labels for the table column headers. This item group was created using the default PageBuilder 4 behavior. On the right, you can see an item group where the labels for the column headers have been replaced with icons using a bit of custom code.

Earlier today, Adam.JSGenerator v1.3 was released to CodePlex and NuGet. New features include support for the 'this' keyword as well as inserting statement snippets in addition to expression snippets. The main page on the CodePlex project site gives more details about what's new and improved.

What is Adam.JSGenerator? It's a .NET library that allows one to write C# code that emits JavaScript and is used in our own software to produce the JavaScript snippets required for Web development and in the code that interacts with Adobe products.

You can include Adam.JSGenerator easily in Visual Studio, provided that you have the NuGet package manager installed. To add it to a project, simply use the NuGet package manager, or at the NuGet command line type "Install-Package Adam.JSGenerator".

To wrap up 2012 we will look at another advanced example of custom development for PageBuilder: ABC Positioning.

What is ABC Positioning? For each resolved product that's being added to a page or spread there will be added some extra information on another place of the page. The extra information needs to be visually linked to the resolved product. How to achieve this?

Introduction

In this sample we want to create a catalog where the image of each product is seperated from the product (metadata) itself. In other words, each page is divided in two: the textual information of the product and the image corresponding to each product. Maybe a screenshot will make it clear. Following image is a page taken from the resulting catalog.

One of the many great features in PIM Studio is the linked items panel that allows you to link a product to other products. In addition to linking them, you can also edit these linked products.

For the linked items panel we provided a way so you can configure many different types of columns. Out of the box we provide a variety of column types, but we know we will never be able to concieve and create all the customer specific cases. To tackle that, we have created the linked items panel so you can create your own types of columns.

In this post we will provide a column that will show the category paths of each linked product. We will also show you how to add this new type of column to an existing linked items panel. This way we hope to give you a very simple example that will help you create all the customer specific columns you need.

Today we will look at a more advanced way of extending PageBuilder through custom development. In InDesign, you can add structured metadata to the content in your documents. In fact, this is how the PageBuilder Tagger plug-in stores any layout options and links to ADAM in the templates you create. But you can also define your own tags and attributes which can be accessed through the PageBuilder API.

Suppose you want to develop a wild new feature that is currently not covered by the out-of-the-box behavior. Say you want to add a variable horizontal offset to the item groups that are added to your catalog. An ADAM field will be used to store the desired offset for each record or product in the database. Here's what a simple record in ADAM for an item group with an offset of 40 points might look like:

In this post, we'll walk you to the process of creating a custom Notification Agent for your maintenance jobs. Out of the box, there's a email agent that sends some information when a maintenance job has completed or failed.

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<engines>
  <add name="MaintenanceJobEmailAgent" type="Adam.Core.Maintenance.MaintenanceJobEmailAgent, Adam.Core" />
</engines>

In this post, we'll write a similar custom notification agent that will send a basic email by means of a web service.

Writing a simple Web Service

Our email will be sent through a web service. Below you see a very simple (and rather naive) webmethod that will send an email with some basic status information of the maintenance job.

One of the key new features of PageBuilder 4 is the ability to automatically split item groups for single products across multiple columns or pages in a catalog. The PageBuilder plug-in for InDesign allows you to specify which boxes in your templates are suitable locations for breaking up the design and which text boxes can be split up when the layout demands it:

You can also specify that a certain box in your design template should be repeated on the next page or column whenever an item group is split up. This way you can ensure that each column or page starts with a product title or identifier to provide additional context while browsing the catalog.

New technologies have created many new types of marketing and have increased the relative importance of marketing activities within (global) corporations. Marketing however has not been subject to the same levels of accountability found in other domains, such as Production. The easy ride for Marketing is now set to end, however, as CEOs increase pressure on CMOs to show greater responsibility for their revenue performance. Adding to this pressure are rapidly evolving marketing challenges such as globalization, online media distribution, process-based organization, and cross-channel communication.

These developments will mean CMOs and CIOs have to work together in new ways to establish a common roadmap for responding to new pressures. A core element of this new alliance will be the integration of a DAM platform into Marketing's infrastructure.

To find out why CIOs are increasingly interested in DAM, read our new White Paper and tune in to our webinar on the 10th of November.