Get started with CMS (SaaS)

Optimizely Content Management System (CMS) (SaaS) provides powerful web content management capabilities through an intuitive user interface, letting experienced and occasional users work efficiently with content. See an interactive demo on how to approach content modeling in Optimizely CMS (SaaS) and Visual Builder. See also Content modeling.

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Before editors can create content in CMS (SaaS), administrators and developers must implement a content model that is modular and reusable to ensure consistency and reduce redundancy. A robust content model supports your project's immediate needs and its long-term evolution. See Get started in the Optimizely CMS (SaaS) developer guide.

Enter your username and password in the Optimizely login dialog box, and click Log In.

After logging in, your implementation and access rights control the options you see.

General features

• Context-sensitive actions – Some features are only available in certain contexts. The toolbar (for example) presents relevant actions depending on what you are currently doing, and the add (+) button also offers context-sensitive options.
• Primary actions – Some actions open in a window, such as a page delete confirmation. The background is then dimmed, meaning you must finish the primary action to continue.
• Action feedback and notifications – Successful actions are confirmed by a message in the notification bar. A notification may also display if an error requires you to take action.
• Drag-and-drop operations – Drag-and-drop is supported in many areas. For example, you can drag pages, media files, and blocks into the rich-text area or content areas or rearrange the page tree structure using drag-and-drop.
• Tooltips – Hover over a button or field, and a short tooltip displays.
• Keyboard commands – Standard keyboard commands are supported in many areas, such as moving pages in the page tree or the rich-text editor.
• Search – Supported in many areas to locate, such as pages in the page tree or media in the folder structure.
• Adaptable work environment – Resize and pin the panels depending on what you are currently doing, and add and remove gadgets of your choice for quick access to functionality.
• Support for time zones – Publishing actions in the edit view is done in your local time zone, whereas administrative actions are based on server time.
• Context menus – Available in many areas, such as the panels, page tree, and item listings. The menu displays different options depending on where you are in the interface and what you are doing.

CMS (SaaS) dashboard

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You must have at least edit privileges to see the CMS (SaaS) dashboard.

The CMS (SaaS) dashboard displays information about your content that lets you access it from one place. Each tab displays numbers; to update the numbers, click on the tab titles. 

• Define Content – Click Model Content to open the CMS (SaaS) settings. You can also access the following links:

  • Manage API clients – Opens Settings > API Clients. See API Clients.
  • REST API – Opens Introduction to the CMS (SaaS) REST API.
  • Developer documentation – Opens Get started (CMS (SaaS) dev).

• Create Content – Click Create Content to open the Edit view. See Get started with Visual Builder and All Properties editing view. You can also access the following links:

  • Import Content – Opens Settings > Import Content. See Import data into CMS (SaaS).
  • REST API – Opens Introduction to the CMS (SaaS) REST API.
  • User documentation – Opens this document.

• Render Content – Open Optimizely Graph to render content with the following links:

  • Browse the graph – Opens Optimizely Graph.
  • Graph examples – Opens Github with examples of Optimizely Graph.

• Workflow Status – Click on any of the tabs, and click any link names to go directly to edit the page. You can sort the Name, Last modified, and Modified by columns by clicking on them. You can also select More (...) to edit the page or edit the workflow for that page. See Approval sequences. 

  The following image shows workflow status activity on 29 pages: 23 Drafts, three In Review, and one each of Approved, Scheduled, or Rejected status. It also shows 22 broken links. When the dashboard is loaded, each tab displays numbers; to update the numbers, click on the tab titles. It also shows the languages in which you can view the information.

  

• Broken Links – Click a content link to fix any broken links, if applicable. This section shows the number of broken links in the database and lists the pages with at least one broken link. If there is more than one broken link on a page, the page is listed only once. For example, if you have only one page with 25 broken links, it displays 25 with a list of only one page. If you have 25 pages with one broken link each, it displays 25 broken links with a list of 25 pages (five at a time). If you do not have any broken links, you see a message that there are no broken links.

  

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  Note

  Broken links are not automatically updated. You need to refresh the dashboard to update the broken links gadget.

• Language – Select from the available languages to see the dashboard in that language. The content list in every tab in the workflow status displays only content of that language.

  

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  Note

  Administrators can enable the language filter options. Also, if you go to the dashboard and select Swedish (for example), you can go to another page and Swedish is maintained when you return to the dashboard. However, if you log out, the language filter is reset to the default language.

CMS (SaaS) edit

CMS (SaaS) primarily edits with Optimizely Visual Builder and provides additional editing features with All Properties editing view

Optimizely Visual Builder is the editor interface in CMS (SaaS) that makes content creation and layout building intuitive and accessible to non-technical users.

Content creators can design, modify, and reuse layout templates directly in the user interface and create adaptable experiences for any channel without developer involvement. Frontend developers can also empower editors to modify the style of the created content while adhering to brand guidelines.

The toolbar and the panels in the Optimizely Content Management System (CMS) (SaaS) edit view provide easy access to functions when working with content. When entering the edit view, you have the top menu and the toolbar at the top, and adjustable panels to the left and right.

CMS (SaaS) reports

Reports are valuable tools for content editors, application owners, marketers, and merchandisers to monitor various application activities. CMS (SaaS) has built-in reports.

When you generate a report, select the desired report and the starting point in the page tree from where you want the report to include data, then click Show Report. You can filter data by time and language, and pages included in the report results open in edit view when you click a page link.

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Some reports rely on scheduled jobs running in the background to generate report data; see Scheduled jobs.

Select Type of Report to display a report about one of the following subjects:

• Not Published Pages – Displays pages that have not been published and have a last changed date within a certain period. Select a page from the list of report results to open it. 
• Published Pages – Displays pages published within a certain period. Select a page from the list of report results to open it.
• Changed Pages – Displays pages with a changed date within a certain period. Select a page from the list of report results to open it.
• Expired Pages – Displays pages with a stop publish date within a certain period. Select a page from the list of report results to open it .
• Simple Addresses – Displays published pages that have a simple address. Select a page from the list of report results to open it.
• Link Status – Displays unreachable links, perhaps due to a page being moved, an application shut down, or a momentary outage of a target link.

CMS (SaaS) settings

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CMS (SaaS) administrators and developers with administrator access rights manage the following CMS (SaaS) user interface settings.

• Content Types
• Applications
• Blueprints
• Access rights
  • Set Access Rights
  • API Clients
• Scheduled jobs
  • Scheduled Jobs
• Config
  • Languages
  • Edit Tabs
• Tools
  • Export data
  • Import data
  • Convert Pages
  • Change Log
  • Search Configuration

My settings

You can change some of your personal account settings under the top menu > your avatar > My settings.

Your username is set in an external system, such as Windows or an SQL database, and cannot be changed in CMS.

In the Display Options tab, you have the following settings:

• Personal language – You can select your desired user interface language from the drop-down list. This setting affects the language of the user interface, such as texts in buttons and dialog boxes. It does not affect the language of your website.

  CMS (SaaS) supports 12 user interface languages. English is the master language, and the others are translated languages. You can have many more content languages.

  • DA – Danish
  • DE – German
  • EN – English
  • ES – Spanish
  • FI – Finnish
  • FR – French
  • IT – Italian
  • JA – Japanese
  • NL – Dutch
  • NO – Norwegian
  • SV – Swedish
  • ZH – Simplified Chinese

  See Set a personal language preference below.

• Views – Limit touch support – On touchscreen devices, browsers may have difficulties prioritizing between input from the screen and the computer mouse, which may cause problems such as making it impossible to resize panels using the computer mouse. If you experience problems with CMS and the touchscreen, enable the Limit touch support feature. This feature prioritizes computer mouse input over touchscreen input and enables the computer mouse to interact with drag and drop, resizing panels, and so on.

• Reset Views – You can reset your user interface views to the settings. If you have changes to the user interfaces, such as added, moved, or deleted gadgets, these changes are undone, and the default views are displayed.

Set a personal language preference

You can set the preferred UI language in your user profile.

1. Select your user profile avatar > My Settings.

2. Select your preferred language from the Personal Language drop-down list in the Display Options tab.

   

3. Click Save. The user interface displays the selected language.

   

Gadgets

A gadget is a small application added to the assets and navigation panels in a CMS (SaaS) solution. As a developer, you can create custom gadgets to extend the features of your CMS (SaaS) solution.

When installed on the application, you can add some add-ons as gadgets to the navigation or assets panels in edit view. The user interface has some gadgets that are available by default, while you must manually add others.

Select Add Gadgets, and select a gadget to add from the list of available gadgets.

The Gadgets dialog box displays.

• Blocks – Used to access blocks (default in the assets panel).
• Media – Used to access media files (default in the assets panel).
• Recent – Displays items you have viewed during your current browser session.
• Recently changed – Displays recently changed content on the application.
• Tasks – Displays tasks to be done on the application. This gadget lets you filter items on status. You can, for example, see a list of items set as Ready to Publish.
• Versions – Manages content versions. See also Compare versions of content for information on working with versions.

To move or remove a gadget:

• Select Rearrange Gadgets, select a gadget, and drag it to the desired position on the dashboard or in a panel.
• Select Rearrange Gadgets, and click the Remove gadget symbol next to the gadget you want to remove from the dashboard or panel.

User interface elements

Product chooser

Select which Optimizely product to work with if you have more than one.

Left navigation bar

Access to the following:

• Dashboard

• Edit

• Reports

• Settings

  

Settings

Edit settings for the Content tree.

Panel Pin

Expand and lock the Content tree or Assets panels in an open position.

Toggle Navigation Panel

Toggle to display or hide the Content tree.

Create Content

Create a page or block.

Breadcrumb

See the hierarchy of the content tree and click for quick access. For example: Mosey Bank / Insights). Click the title to rename it.

Open the More (...) menu for other options.

Content tree

See the page tree structure (Pages) and tasks management (Tasks).

Outline panel

See a list view of your sections. You can drag and drop a section in any order or go to the content you want to edit by hovering over the section in the preview or the outline.

Preview Selectors

Select an icon to view content as it displays on that device (Desktop, Tablet, or Mobile).

Preview Panel

See content in the selected device rendering. The following image shows a Mobile preview.

Language selector

Select the language if you have more than one installed.

Comments

Click to open a panel to add comments about the page.

Compare Different Versions

Work with versions. See Compare versions of content.

Publish or Options

Access an actions menu with context-sensitive publishing options, which vary depending on content status and user access rights. When you have unpublished content open, this button says Publish? Otherwise, it is called Options. When there is unpublished content, you can publish it (if you have publishing rights) from this button. You can also schedule it for later publishing or revert to the published version. Revert to Published discards the current draft and displays the last published version.

Visual Builder and All Properties

Open the Visual Builder and the All Properties editing view to access available properties, including more advanced ones such as access rights and language settings.

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When you work with experiences, elements, and sections, select Select view > Visual Builder. See Get started with Visual Builder

All Properties view provides access to available properties, including more advanced ones such as access rights and language settings.

When editing content properties, you can add, delete, or select items such as a category, image in a media folder, or a page in the content tree.

Toggle Assets Panel

Toggle to display or hide the Assets panel.

Search

Open a panel to search the CMS. 

Notifications

View notifications, when you have them.

Help

See links to product documentation.

Account

See My settings above in this article.

Assets panel

View the Media and Blocks folder structures. Drag and drop one or multiple items from the assets panel into the content you are currently working on.

Assets

View assets associated with the selected Blocks or Media folder.

Settings (Content tree, lower)

Access options to Show Content in Current Language Only, View Trash, and Remove Gadget.

Settings (Assets)

View assets in the Trash.

New Page or New Block

Create a page in the content tree, or create a block in your assets.

More options (Content tree, lower)

Access options such as Translate and Edit Approval Sequence.

Recent

You can add a gadget to the navigation panel and expand and collapse with the arrow. The following image shows a Recent gadget that shows items you have viewed during your current browser session.