In this example, your site includes a Login page called login.jsp. You decide to put a banner containing dynamic content on the Login page.
The application developer creates the slot as a Nucleus component. He or she can do this in three ways: by writing a .properties file; by using the Component Editor in the ATG Control Center; or by using the Scenarios > Slots window in the ATG Control Center. This process is described in the Using Slot Components chapter in the ATG Personalization Programming Guide.
The page designer then uses a targeting servlet bean to display the slot component, adding it to the banner area of the login.jsp page. This process is described in the chapter Setting Up Targeting Services in the ATG Personalization Programming Guide.
After the slot has been added to the appropriate site page, you use the ATG Control Center to create a scenario that does the following:
Defines the events that trigger the display of items in the slot.
Includes an Add Items to Slot element that specifies the content items you want to display and the slot you want to show them in.
In this example, you set up a scenario that waits for visitors to access the Login page and then specifies three content items, X, Y, and Z, for display in a slot named ProductSlot. (Item X is perhaps an image containing a “Welcome!” message, and items Y and Z are images of two products that are currently on promotion.)
When someone triggers the scenario by visiting the Login page, the scenario fills the slot named ProductSlot with content items X, Y, and Z. The slot component then displays the items in the slot, which the page developer has already added to the Login page. The system uses various methods and settings to define the order in which to show items and the number of items that appear at once. See How Content is Displayed in Slots for more information.
How Content is Displayed in Slots
The slot component can display the specified items in different ways depending on how the application developer configures the component. For example, the slot can show items once each or in continuous rotation. You can specify the order of display or have the slot display its items randomly. You can also limit the number of items that can appear in the slot at any one time. The sections that follow describe some of these settings. For more information on other options that you can define for slots, refer to Using Slot Components in the ATG Personalization Programming Guide.
Defining the Order of Display
By default, if you do not specify the other ordering options, the system displays items in the order in which they arrive in the slot.
When you create a scenario for a slot, you can use the At Priority option in the Add Items to Slot element to set an order for items from this scenario relative to items that come from other scenarios. For example, suppose you have two scenarios called Welcome and Login that contribute two items each to the same slot. You set the At Priority option to 1 for the Welcome scenario items and you set it to 2 for the Login scenario items. (1 is a lower priority value than 2 for items in slots.)
A site visitor triggers the Welcome scenario first. It adds two items, A and B, to the slot.
The visitor then triggers the Login scenario, which also adds two items, C and D, to the same slot, but with a higher priority (2).
When the visitor views the page containing the slot, the system displays items in this order: C, D, A, B.
For information on finding and setting the At Priority option, refer to Creating a Scenario to Fill a Slot.
The Ordering property in the slot component also changes the order in which items appear. The application developer defines this property when he or she sets up the component. For more information, see Using Slot Components in the ATG Personalization Programming Guide.
Active or Passive Slots?
One of the settings that the application developer defines when he or she creates the slot component is the event generation mode, which can be passive (the default) or active.
When a site visitor views a page containing a passive slot, the slot displays any items that contributing scenarios have currently defined for it. The slot itself does not issue a request for content items. The model for passive slots can be summed up as follows:
You create one or more contributing scenarios containing Add Item to Slot elements. These elements specify content items that will fill the passive slot in step 3.
A visitor displays a page containing the slot.
The slot displays the items that are currently defined for it.
Active slot components, however, can act as scenario events, which allows them to issue their own requests for items. When a site visitor views a page containing an active slot, the slot triggers a scenario that tells the system which content items to display. The model for active slots looks like this:
A visitor displays a page containing the active slot.
The slot generates a scenario event, triggering one or more Add Item to Slot elements that fill it with items for display.
This behavior means that an empty slot can fill itself with content on demand, which can have advantages for larger sites. For example, suppose you have 50 pages on which you want to display the same slot. With the passive model, you would have to specify each page as part of setting up the contributing scenario, or run the scenario for all pages in the site. With the active model, you do not have to specify pages because the slot requests its own items when any of those 50 pages is displayed.
For information on creating an active slot, see Creating a Scenario for an Active Slot.
Note for developers: The Passive setting in the slot .properties file corresponds to the “Never” option in the Slot Wizard. The Active setting corresponds to the “When empty” option.
