ATG Content Administration and the Asset Manager let you test project assets on an application that is deployed on a preview-enabled server, and evaluate it from the perspective of different user profiles. You can preview assets from any project that you create in the Asset Manager or Content Administration.
This chapter provides an overview of preview capabilities and how to set it up in your environment. For information about previewing assets in ATG Content Administration and ATG Merchandising, see the ATG Business Control Center User’s Guide.
Supported Asset Types
You can preview the following asset types:
GSARepositoryassets—for example, product catalog assets.Personalization assets: user segments, targeters, content groups, slots, and scenarios.
Preview Benefits
Preview is best suited for environments where content developers and reviewers need to evaluate their work regularly on a production-like site before deployment. Configured through Nucleus components, preview is easy to set up, and can support a rich matrix of user profiles and preview sites that are readily accessible to users. You can deploy the preview application on ATG servers that do not run the ATG Business Control Center, and thereby safely provide preview access to users who lack ATG Business Control Center login privileges.
Constraints
The following restrictions apply to preview:
Preview is project-based: it only shows asset changes in the project where the preview session is launched; assets outside the project show the state they were in when last checked-in. Review of cross-project dependencies requires deployment to a staging site, where multiple projects can be deployed and reviewed.
WWWFileSystemassets, such as binary documents and media files (for example, MPEG and GIF) are not supported by preview; you must test these on a staging server.Faceted Search and Search Merchandising are currently not supported for preview. For information on previewing search results, see the Testing Search Queries chapter in the ATG Merchandising User Guide.
Login and logout functionality is not supported for preview.
Preview Setup Steps
In order to preview assets, you must set up the asset management server designated to run the ATG Business Control Center to support preview. You can also set up additional non-BCC servers to support preview, so multiple applications are available to preview project changes.
In order to enable preview in your environment, perform the following steps:
You can also use the view mapping system to configure or suppress preview for individual asset types. This is discussed in the last section of this chapter, Asset Preview.
