When the ATG Business Control Center starts, the Task Configuration Manager component locates the default task configuration file called taskConfiguration.xml as well as any custom task configuration files that you’ve created. All task configuration files managed by a given Task Configuration Manager are collapsed into one file using a process called XML File Combination. During this process, XML File Combination determines the tags to use from the default configuration file and the tags to override with values provided by a custom file. Then, the Task Configuration Manager parses the combined file, organizing the information so that, when a page is requested, the ATG Business Control Center can determine what UI elements to display based on the current activity, task, or workflow.
To learn more about XML File Combination, refer to the XML File Combination section of the Nucleus: Organizing JavaBean Components chapter in the ATG Programming Guide.
You can use more than one Task Configuration Manager if you want one or more task configuration files to be combined together without incorporating settings from other task configuration files. You may find it easier to have one Task Configuration Manager per application to reduce the scope of tag inheritance. To learn how ATG Merchandising implements a different task configuration manager, see the Merchandising-Specific Task Configuration Manager section of the ATG Merchandising User Guide.
Here’s how the tags in the task configuration file are evaluated:
When there are general settings that apply to all activities, those settings are enclosed in a
<default-activity>tag. To define the UI appearance for a particular activity, you specify the activity’s ID and, if you want the activity to inherit settings from another activity, in addition to the default, you include that activity’s ID as well. Inherited settings can be overwritten – replaced, removed, or added to – by new settings you supply in a custom task configuration file.General settings for tasks and workflows may be specified using the
<default-task>tag, which inherits settings from the<default-activity>tag. Similar to activities, you can specify independent settings for particular workflows and tasks, inherit settings from other resources or, most commonly, use a combination of both methods.Keep in mind that a workflow is made up of tasks. If you define some settings on the workflow-level and others on the task-level for tasks in that workflow, both sets of settings are used unless a conflict occurs, in which case the task setting is used.
Changes to settings for existing activities, tasks or workflows as well as new settings for other ones are specified in a custom task configuration file. It’s likely your application will use multiple task configuration files and have several layers of inheritance defined within them. The following example demonstrates how inheritance works. Consider a Replace Small Images task, which is part of the Image Update workflow. If settings are provided to each of the following entities, they are applied in this order:
Replace Small Images task
Image Update workflow, which specifies the
assetManager.defaultBrowseactivity as a resource from which it inherits settingsassetManager.defaultBrowse activity<default-task><default-activity>
