Automate with workflows automating-via-workflows

Content management activity content-management-activity

Creating, editing, and publishing content can be automated using a workflow configured via the Adobe Campaign client interface.

The Content management activity is accessed via the Tools toolbar of the workflow diagram.

Activity properties are broken down into four steps:

Content content

Update the content update-the-content

Action to execute action-to-execute

Transition transition

The Generate an output transition option lets you add an output transition to the Content management activity to link a new activity to workflow execution. After checking this option, enter a label for the transition.

Examples examples

Automate content creation and delivery automating-content-creation-and-delivery

The following example automates the creation and delivery of a content block.

The content is configured via the “Content management” activity:

A new content instance is created via the publication model and the content string folder.

In our example, we have overloaded the delivery subject. It will be taken into account instead of the one entered in the Delivery template.

The content is filled in automatically by an XML feed coming from the URL entered:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='ISO-8859-1'?>
<book name="Content automation test" date="2008/06/08" language="eng" computeString="Content automation test">
  <section id="1" name="Introduction">
    <page>Introduction to input forms.</page>
  </section>
</book>

The data format does not match the data schema entered in the publication template (cus:book in our example); the <section> element must be replaced with the <chapter> element. We need to apply the “cus:book-workflow.xsl” stylesheet to make the necessary changes.

Source code of the XSLT stylesheet used:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
 <xsl:output indent="yes" method="xml"  encoding="ISO-8859-1"/>

 <xsl:template match="text()|@*"/>

  <xsl:template match="*">
    <xsl:variable name="element.name" select="name(.)"/>
    <xsl:element name="{$element.name}">
      <xsl:copy-of select="text()|@*"/>
      <xsl:apply-templates/>
    </xsl:element>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="book">
  <book name="test">
     <xsl:apply-templates/>
    <book>
 </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="section">
    <chapter>
      <xsl:for-each select="@*">
        <xsl:copy-of select="."/>
      </xsl:for-each>
       <xsl:apply-templates/>
    </chapter>
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

The final action of the activity is to save the content instance and proceed to the next task.

Targeting is carried out via the Query activity.

An AND-join activity was added to make sure the delivery is only started once target querying and content updates are complete.

The delivery action is configured via the Delivery activity:

A new delivery action is created based on a template.

The delivery template of the activity is used to select the transformation templates of the publication template. Content generation will take into account all HTML and Text templates without delivery templates or those which are referenced with the same template as the activity.

The target to be delivered is entered via the incoming event.

The delivery content is populated via the incoming event.

The last step to completing the activity is to prepare and then launch the delivery.

Create content for later publishing creating-content-and-publishing-it-later

This example creates a content block and launches file publication after a specific time delay.

The first Content management task creates a content instance.

A waiting activity is added to pause the next transition for a week.

Content is entered manually during this time period.

The next task launches content generation.

The content to be published is entered via the incoming transition.

The final action is to generate this content by forcing the publication directory.

The JavaScript Code activity retrieves the full name of each generated file.

Create the delivery and its content creating-the-delivery-and-its-content

This example uses the same concept as the first example, only it creates the delivery action in the first step.

The first Create delivery task creates the delivery action.

The fork activity lets you launch target calculation and the creation of the content instance in parallel.

Once the tasks have been executed, the AND-join box activates the Delivery task to launch the previously created delivery on content and targeting.

The delivery action to be started is populated via the transition.

The target to be delivered is entered via the incoming event.

The delivery content is populated via the incoming event.

The final action of the activity is to prepare and launch the delivery.

Import content from FTP importing-content-from-ftp

If your delivery content is available in an HTML file located on FTP or SFTP servers, you can easily load this content into Adobe Campaign deliveries. Refer to this example.

Import content from Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) connector importing-content-from-amazon-simple-storage-service--s3--connector

If your delivery content is located on Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) buckets, you can easily load this content into Adobe Campaign deliveries. Refer to this example.

Semi-automatic update semi-automatic-update

Content data can be updated in “semi-automatic” mode. The data is recovered from an XML feed via a URL.

The activation of data recovery is performed manually via the input form.

The aim is to declare an editBtn type <input> field in the form. This control comprises an edit zone and a button to launch processing.

The edit zone lets you populate variable data used to construct the URL of the XML feed of data to be retrieved.

The button executes the GetAndTransform SOAP method populated under the <input> tag.

Control declaration in the form is as follows:

<input type="editbtn" xpath="<path>">
  <enter>
    <soapCall name="GetAndTransform" service="ncm:content">
      <param exprIn="<url>" type="string"/>
      <param exprIn="'xtk:xslt|<style sheet>'" type="string"/>
      <param type="DOMElement" xpathOut="<output path>"/>
    </soapCall>
  </enter>
</input>

The GetAndTransform method must be declared under the <enter> element of the <input> tag. This tag takes as parameters the URL of recovery of XML data from an expression constructed dynamically. The second parameter of the function is optional, and references a stylesheet used for an intermediate transformation when the incoming XML data is not in the same format as the content.

The output updates the content based on the path entered in the last parameter.

Example: To illustrate this example, we start from the “cus:book” schema.

A semi-automatic update edit control input form is added:

<input label="File name" type="editbtn" xpath="/tmp/@name">
  <enter>
    <soapCall name="GetAndTransform" service="ncm:content">
      <param exprIn="'https://myserver.adobe.com/incoming/' + [/tmp/@name] + '.xml'" type="string"/>
      <param exprIn="'xtk:xslt|cus:book-workflow.xsl'" type="string"/>
      <param type="DOMElement" xpathOut="."/>
    </soapCall>
  </enter>
</input>

The edit zone lets you enter the name of the file to be retrieved. The URL is constructed based on this name, for example: https://myserver.adobe.com/incomin/data.xml

The format of the data to be retrieved is the same as in example 1 of workflow automation. We shall use the “cus:book-workflow.xsl” stylesheet seen in this example.

The result of job execution updates the content instance from the path ‘.’.