New email notifications are a big distraction. Disable them!

Archive processed email

Archive emails that you don’t need to take further actions. In your inbox, you should have only the things you need to do, not those you have already done.

I personally have only one archive folder, you might need to have more, but try to keep it simple!

If you have never archived your emails, archiving everything now might take several hours, but is well worth it! Also, it should not take any of your time, as it can be done overnight.

Use tasks and calendar appointments

Use tasks for things that can be done quickly (less than 30min).

Use calendar appointments for bigger tasks (more than 30min).

Setup calendar and tasks on the main screen

Have all the information you need on the main screen to avoid extra clicks and loading wait times!

Use drag and drop

Take full advantage of drag-and-drop for moving files and creating tasks and events!

Keep windows small

Don’t open your emails on a big window, it’s easier to read on a smaller screen (like books).

Use the file preview feature

Preview your files directly on the email.

Colour direct emails

Distinguish emails sent directly to you with colour!

Don’t abuse folder rules

Use folder rules wisely. If you have too many rules and folders, you might lose time checking them all.

I hope this was helpful,

Thanks for reading!

Mário Nunes

The post 9 Outlook Quick Tips for Productivity appeared first on Blog IT.

If you are experiencing “DataTokens must contain an ‘umbraco-doc-request’ key with a PublishedContentRequest object”, you might have configured static routes with RouteTable.Routes.MapRoute(…).

Using the default UmbracoHelper Umbraco from Umbraco.Web.Mvc on these static routes might cause this error.

The solution is using new UmbracoHelper(UmbracoContext.Current) instead.

The post A Solution to DataTokens must contain an ‘umbraco-doc-request’ key with a PublishedContentRequest object appeared first on Blog IT.

• This enables you to have an Angular application alongside your Umbraco website, on a specified route.
• The Angular App can be protected by the Authentication of your website, if you have it. And you can make use of surface controllers for authenticated requests.
• The routing of your app will work as intended, for example, if your Angular app is at /app and you make a request to /app/products, the request will be routed to the angular app products’ page.

What this is not

• A complete front end for a Umbraco website with dynamic routes.
• This doesn’t have dynamic routes, you have to specify them on your code.

Let’s get started!

First, start by creating a controller to handle the Angular App request.

using System.Web.Mvc;

public class AngularAppController : BaseController
{
    public ActionResult AngularAppView()
    {
        return View();
    }
}

Then, you have to decide the route where your Angular app will render. On this example it will be /angularapp.

On your ApplicationStarted method, put this code:

RouteTable.Routes.MapRoute(
  "AngularApp",
  "angularapp/{*.}",
  new { controller = "AngularApp", action = "AngularAppView" });

The {*.} syntax is what makes your angular app routes load and not return the 404 page.

If you don’t have an ApplicationStarted method, find out how you to create it here: https://our.umbraco.org/documentation/reference/events/application-startup

Under your Views folder, create a folder with the same name as the controller you set in MapRoute. In this case it will be “AngularApp”.
Inside it, create a view with the same name as the action set you set in MapRoute.

Inside the view put the contents of the index.html of your angular app.
Then you will need to move your angular app files somewhere like you /Assets folder, and edit their paths on the view.

Almost done!

Now you need to edit the routes of your Angular app.
Simply add the route you chose as a prefix to the routes.

From something like this:

const routes: Routes = [
  { path: '', redirectTo: '/dashboard', pathMatch: 'full' },
  { path: '/dashboard', component: DashboardComponent },
  { path: '/detail/:id', component: HeroDetailComponent },
  { path: '/heroes', component: HeroesComponent }
];

To this:

const routes: Routes = [
  { path: 'angularapp', redirectTo: 'angularapp/dashboard', pathMatch: 'full' },
  { path: 'angularapp/dashboard', component: DashboardComponent },
  { path: 'angularapp/detail/:id', component: HeroDetailComponent },
  { path: 'angularapp/heroes', component: HeroesComponent }
];

Thanks for reading!
Mário

The post Adding an Angular app to your Umbraco Website appeared first on Blog IT.

Example:
I have an image with this url: “/images/mario-profile-photo.jpeg”.
Change the url to: “/images/mario-profile-photo.jpeg?updated={DateTime.Now.Ticks}“.

So, I lied, sorry! This will make the browser request the image again, because the url is different. It doesn’t really refresh the cache.

Using DateTime.Now.Ticks will force the refresh every time the page loads, so I don’t recommend using it.

If you have the time of when the photo was last updated, use that instead! Something like: {Photo.UpdateDate.Ticks}
This way, you will only request a new image when it is different from the one you already have in cache.

Note: the “?updated=” property is just a name, you can use whatever you want. The important thing is to modify the url.

For Umbraco developers: When saving an image, do not forget to set it’s UpdateDate! Umbraco doesn’t update that property automatically.

Hope this helps,
Thanks for reading!
Mário

The post Force Image Cache Refresh Programmatically appeared first on Blog IT.

uSync has MemberType synchronization disabled by default.

To enable it simply go to Config\uSyncBackOffice.Config and set MemberTypeHandler to true.

<Handlers Group="default" EnableMissing="true">
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: DataTypeHandler" Enabled="true" />
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: TemplateHandler" Enabled="true" />

    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: ContentTypeHandler" Enabled="true" />
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: MediaTypeHandler" Enabled="true" />
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: LanguageHandler" Enabled="true" />
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: DictionaryHandler" Enabled="true" />
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: MacroHandler" Enabled="true" />
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: DataTypeMappingHandler" Enabled="true" />
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: MemberTypeHandler" Enabled="true" />
    
    <!-- content edition - if installed -->
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: ContentHandler" Enabled="true" />
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: MediaHandler" Enabled="true" />
</Handlers>

Thanks for reading!

Mário Nunes

The post Syncing Member Types with uSync appeared first on Blog IT.

page.SetValue("myPicker", content.Id);

With the new pickers, we can’t use IDs anymore, we have to use UDIs instead. They look like this:

"umb://document/28b551d1e9e74c758686604c9168b910"

So how can we get the content UDI?
If we have an IContent, we can simply use the extension

string udi = content.GetUdi().ToString();

If we have an IPublishedContent, we need to do a little bit more work.
Umbraco provides a built in function to create UDIs. To use it, we need these:

using Umbraco.Core;
using static Umbraco.Core.Constants;

Get the UDI like this:

string udi = Udi.Create(UdiEntityType.Document, content.GetKey()).ToString();

If you want to set multiple items, separate the udis with a comma. The resulting string should be like this:
"umb://document/28b551d1e9e74c758686604c9168b910,umb://document/28b551d1e9e74c758686604c9168b912,..."

To clean up the code, I created an extension class.

    using Umbraco.Core;
    using Umbraco.Core.Models;
    using Umbraco.Web;
    using static Umbraco.Core.Constants;

    public static class UmbracoExtensions
    {
        /// <summary>
        /// Gets the specified content udi.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="content">The content.</param>
        /// <returns>The content udi.</returns>
        public static string GetUdi(this IPublishedContent content)
        {
            return Udi.Create(UdiEntityType.Document, content.GetKey()).ToString();
        }
    }

With this extension, you can set the pickers with IPublishedContent with just one line of code!

page.SetValue("myPicker", content.GetUdi());

So why not use IContent all the time?
To get an IContent, we need to use a service like MediaService or ContentService, they are much slower that getting and IPublishedContent through Umbraco.TypedContent(), which gets it from cache.

UPDATE: Support for member pickers. Other pickers might need additional code too.

public static string GetUdi(this IPublishedContent content)
{
    string entityType = UdiEntityType.Document;

    if (string.Equals(Models.Member.ModelTypeAlias, content.ContentType.Alias))
    {
        entityType = UdiEntityType.Member;
    }

    return Udi.Create(entityType, content.GetKey()).ToString();
}

Thanks for reading,
Mário Nunes

The post Working with Umbraco 7.6 New Pickers appeared first on Blog IT.