How to organize multiple issues in a catalogue app?

[#1]

Hello everyone,

last year we created an catalogue app for our customer. Now we want to add a catalogue issue of the current year without removing the old one. My perspective was, that DPS AEM is capable of handling multiple issues, but i cannot find any information or tutorial how to organize the content in order to achieve this. I tried adding a new product on the "Products & subscriptions" page (don't know if that is the correct title in english, since we use in it german), but when we tested this approach in the preflight app, there was no other issue appearing / accessible.

As far i've seen, the collection of the current catalogue is defined as being top level content, but i cannot find a way to change this.

All tutorials provided by DPS 2015 / AEM focus on basic apps with a single product content, so i'm not even sure, if this feature is exiting in DPS 2015 / AEM.

Can anyone help?

Thank you very much in advance,

Carsten

[#2]

Thank you both! Very helpful and great suggestions. I'll see what my client decides.

[#3]

Hi Debbie,

Basically you may think of collections/articles as folders and files with the top level - "default" collection. File-article could be copied in any folder. Folder also could be copied in any folder, so flexibility is big as well as chances to have big problems with the wrong/not carefully planned structure.

So you may keep it the way you like:

1. Add the new "Back Issues" collection and add to it another "Volume X, Number Y" collection, then move all the articles from the first issue there (add again in the same order to "Volume X, Number Y", then remove all of them from "default").

2. For the second issue of the magazine just publish all the articles to default collection as you had for the first one.

Thanks,

Gennady

[#4]

From Tips & Tricks: Collections as Navigation with DPS 2015 | Adobe Experience Manager Mobile

Since you originally had all articles in the Top Level Collection, their names automatically appeared in the navigation menu.

Now you have effectively created a Home collection and that's where your articles are but the navigation menu does not dynamically update based on where you are in the App.

If you need some important to display in the menu you'll need to add them in the Top-Level Collection but again you should only do that with specific content to help build a consistent navigation system for your readers.

[#5]

I have a similar question. I have a second issue of a magazine that I'm about to publish, the first we used the whole app as the magazine so in the top level content you had all the articles (not contained in a collection). The names of each of the articles would show up in the app menu. Now I have created a "home" collection as the top level and have two collections within containing the two issues.

My question is why when you click through the collections do the article names not show up in the app menu, is there a way to fix this navigation so that when you go into a collection the articles will show up in the menu? Or even the sub collections?

[#6]

Hey Carsten;

A collection can be a set of articles, it could be all the articles for the current year (2015) in one collection.

When you want to make a new set of articles for the new year (2016) you can make a new collection, and put the new articles into this 2016 collection.

-- To make a new collection, Click on Collections in the "rail" on the left of the interface, then click New at the top...

-- -- Then you can add articles to that collection.

-- -- If you put this new 2016 collection in the top-level (default) collection, then the 2016 collection will appear on the app menu.

Keep in mind that you build new collections and add content to a collections by using Collections.

You build new articles and banners in Content.

I think we're updating the portal this week and I think this will include a new feature that makes this basic organization easier.

About "Products & subscriptions" -- this area of the portal is where you can create new product IDs -- these are a form of metadata for a collection.

Product IDs are used for identifying a collection in a store, you set pricing for a product ID. They're also used with restricted collections to require sign in to gain access to a particular collection.

You don't build a new collection through products & subscriptions.

HTH -- Colin