Sorting Items into Alphabetical Folders

Items need to be identifiable to the sorting rule

Ensure that the Items you’d like to put into alphabetical folders are “identifiable”

  • They all appear beneath a single place in the Content Tree
  • They all are of the same Data Template or
  • They all descend from a common ancestor Data Template

You’ll need facts like these to craft your rules.

The collection of alphabetically stored Items will need a specified location in the content tree

The alphabetical folders will be created beneath a “root” Item, which serves the following purposes:

  • Tells the Rule where to build the alphabetical folders for sorting
  • Hosts the Insert Option to allow Authors to create Items that will then be alphabetically sorted.

Specifics:

  • The Root Item should be of a different Template than the Items that are to be alphabetized to prevent Rule confusion.
  • The Root Item needs an Insert Option for the alphabetizable Item, otherwise Authors will not be able to create items.
  • The Root Item needs to be of a different Template than the “folders” that will be used to organize the items.

Example:

Consider a list of Employees that need to be stored alphabetically. The root Item is of the Template “Employee List” while the Employees themselves are of the Template “Employee Detail”. The alphabetical folders used to organize Employee Detail Items are of the simple “Common/Folder” Template.

You need to specify the Template to use for the Alphabetical folders

The folders themselves do not need to be Pages and thus need no presentation details. Because the “Root Item” is used to create new alphebetizable Items, the folders also do not need (and should not have) Insert Options.

Setting up the Rule

Once you have the Root Item configured and in-place on the Content Tree, the Template for the Items you’re sorting, and have selected a Folder template, you can configure the rule.

  1. Navigate to the appropriate Item Saved rule group in System/Settings.
  2. Insert a new Rule.
  3. Configure your Condition to identify the sortable Item.
  4. Configure your Action to sort the Item on save using the Folder template you’ve chosen.

The rule defined above will only execute for Employee Bio Pages and will use a plain-old Folder for the letter folders.

Here’s an example of the result after adding a few employees:

Recap

  1. Create the Template that needs to be sorted.
  2. Create the Template that will serve as the “root” of the alphabetized content.
  3. Create the “root Item” in your site, make sure its Insert Options includes the Template that you want sorted.
  4. Create the Rule that will perform the sorting.
  5. Try it out!