Content Editor Applications

In one of my last post, I wrote about how to change the source parameter of the Content Editor ending up with Content Editors displaying content from E.g. the Web database.

Another way to have a Content Editor handling different sources is to add additional Content Editor Applications to the existing Content Editor. A Content Editor Application is a link to an application rendered by the Content Editor. You navigate to the application by a link at the bottom of the Content Editor. By default, the Content Editor applications include the “Content Editor”, “Media Library” and the “Workbox”:

Adding a new Content Editor Application 

Adding a new Content Editor Application only takes a single step. 

Go to the Core database and navigate to “/Sitecore/content/applications/content editor/applications/”. Under this item, you find the Content Editor Applications of the “Content Editor”, “Media Library” and the “Workbox” respectively.

Create a new Content Editor Application item based on the template located at “/Sitecore/templates/Sitecore client/content editor/content editor application” or duplicate one of the existing Applications. In this case, I duplicated the “ContentEditorFrom” and renamed it to “Web DB” (I want a Content Editor displaying the items published to the Web database).

The Content Editor Application Item have two fields. The “Header” field providing the link text of the Content Editor Application, and the “Source” field referrer to the url of the webform to be rendered. Add “&sc_content=web” as a query string to the url, and the Content Editor uses the Web database. Changing it to “&sc_conten=core” and the Content Editor uses the Core database instead:

Save the added Content Editor Application item and reload the Content Editor from the Master database and your new created Content Editor Application will be displayed at the bottom of the Content Editor: 

Taking it a step further

From the Source field of the Content Editor Application, you can specify the destination path from where the navigation in the Content Editor (or Media Library) should start. You could duplicate the MediaLibraryForm and add the url to a specific folder in the Media Library into the “&ro=” query string etc.:

The new Content Editor Application will open up the Media Library with the “/Sitecore/media liabrary/images” as root item:

You can actually set the “&ro=” to any path in the database specified by the “&sc_content=” query string. In this way, you can specify the “&ro=” to point where Eg. The Sitecore module “Web Forms For Marketers” places the forms or where any module creates module specific items.

Because a new Content Editor Application is added as a new items into the Core database, you could use the Sitecore security settings to handle, who is able to see and use the Content Editor Applications.

EDIT: Or you could check this out - Content Editor Applications revisit