how to have only the few needed components available in sidekick

[MPRobertson]

We have a template.  Some components are fixed in the template.  Other components we want to allow author to drag and drop on page from sidekick.

We only want a few components available in the sidekick for the author.  How do we control what components are available in the sidekick?

I think this is done via design and layout.  But I have not found a good example to follow.  We are setting this up for a brand new AEM dev env, so looking for a good explanation / example / documentation to follow.

Thank you!

[edubey · Accepted solution]

Hi 

Its simple, go to design mode, select the component you want to use. You can either select the some component or component group ( in this case all the component belonging to that group will be added to sidekick). Once done, back to edit mode

See the screenshot.

Reference link: 

• https://myprogressivelearning.wordpress.com/2014/10/15/how-to-add-components-to-the-sidekick-in-cq5-...
• http://teknopoint.us/aemcq5-adding-components-to-page-using-sidekick/

[smacdonald2008]

In conjunction to what Preveen said ( which is the correct answer to using the components and sidekick) - see this thread: 

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1097617

This talks about setting access rights to components. 

[MPRobertson]

Ah, yes, I am familiar with design mode.  Doing exactly that now.  But this is not exactly what is needed.

Our requirement:  We do not want content authors to be able to pick components in design mode to add to side kick.  We want this locked down, only the few needed components available for that template in side kick.  We do not want authors to change that (probably disable design mode for authors).

I know there is way to set this in the code in eclipse AEM dev plugin - via design / layout file I believe ?

Thanks!

[Opkar_Gill]

Hi,

In the past what we have done is to disable the design mode for content authors and define allowed components for each parsys in the template[1]. In this way, even though the component is in the sidekick(we removed all unnecessary components), it can't be added to the parsys. 

Regards,

Opkar

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23275062/restrict-the-components-in-aem-5-6-1