Sitecore Content Editing Part 3 – Jumper

Now that you know the Home ribbon, I want to show you my favorite ribbon, the Navigate ribbon.

As usual, this blog post is available in German and English to help as many people as possible.

Enough talk, let’s jump in!

The Navigate Ribbon

We again start in the Content Editor, then mark the Habitat item and switch to the Navigate ribbon. The Navigate ribbon groups operations that allow content authors to navigate quickly in the content tree.

Open

The first new button (Save is always available) is Open. When you hit the upper area of the button, a dialog opens that allows you navigate to another item. This dialog is confusingly named Insert Item. The only reason for this functionality to exist is for cases where authors hide the content tree.

More interesting functionality hides behind the triangle (lower part of the button): Recent. This is a list of the last items you accessed starting with the most recent. Click any of the items to jump there directly. The Content tree tab contains basically a copy of the content tree area without the quick action bar.

Back, Up & Forward

Of the next three buttons, Back and Forward work exactly like in your browser. Up goes up one level in the hierarchy. All of these buttons are disabled if the action cannot be performed.

Note that your navigation history is only valid in the session, so logging out clears it.

Subitems & Home

The next two buttons are Subitems and Home. The first one shows a small list of the current item’s subitems, while Home brings you to the item that is defined as the start item of your site. This is also the item that is initially selected when you start the Content Editor. Again, these buttons do not really make sense when you have the content tree visible.

Favorites

The next button is a very helpful one, yet it seems to be widely unknown. Sitecore allows you to define Favorites. Typically content authors work only on a limited number of subtrees. Depending on your site structure, you might have to navigate through a substantial amount of items before you actually arrive at the right item. So why not store relevant items in your favorites and jump to them quickly? Just click Favorites and then Add to Favorites to create an entry. In the screenshot, I have added the item Elements.

Needless to say that Favorites are persisted and available throughout multiple sessions.

You might have seen from the screenshot that this is not the Habitat Solution anymore. Due to a Sitecore bug in some of the versions, the Favorites are broken. Sitecore already fixed this issue, so upgrading does help. Here is an overview of the versions:

• 8.1 all versions: working
• 8.2 Initial: working
• 8.2 update 1: broken
• 8.2 update 2: broken
• 8.2 update 3: working
• 8.2 update 4: working
• 8.2 update 5: working

If your version is broken, you receive the following error when you try to add an item to the favorites.

Under Organize you can edit your favorites. You can move them around and rename them. There is also an option to create folders, but I have not found a way to actually move items into the subfolders. It also seems like you always have to hit Refresh for the list to reflect the latest changes.

Links

The next button contains one of the most time-saving functionality available for content authors: Links. To see this functionality in action, we select the Item Habitat -> Home -> Local Content -> Getting Started and hit the Links button.

A small overview with a list of items appears, devided into two groups.

Items that refer to the selected item

This list contains all items that link to the selected item in any of their fields. Typically those items have a list or link type field, which means you can select another item to link it.

For every reference, you see:

• The display name of the item
• The field that contains the reference
• The item path

When you click the entry, Sitecore jumps to the mentioned item.

Items that the selected item refers to

A list of all items that the selected item references. This means your item normally has fields of the above mentioned types, but also image links fall into this category.

For every reference, you see:

• The display name of the item
• The item path

Hovering over the entry gives you more information, e.g. the field and versions that contain the reference. Clicking the item jumps directly there.

Combine that functionality with the Back-Button and the recent items to quickly navigate through the content tree and maximize your productivity.

Search

The last button of the Navigate ribbon is Search and I only include this for completeness. There are a lot of ways to search in Sitecore, typically they slightly differ to fit a certain purpose. The search in the Navigate ribbon is specialized for content authors, in the advanced search you have predefined filters for creation and editing date as well as for author or creator. In my solution, these filters do not work at all. They might be generally broken, which tells you a lot about how many people actually use this search.

That’s all folks

So much for the Navigate ribbon, I really hope it makes your work more pleasant. Stay tuned for the next Article about the Review Ribbon!