1. This is Channels
2. How it Works
3. How Do I Add It to My Extension?
4. Channel Types
   1. Catalogue Channels
   2. Custom Channels
   3. Filter Channels

This is Channels

With Channels, it is very easy to customize behaviors of Extensions per user. It is a web interface that lets the customer’s Supervisor themselves decide what their users will see in the Extension. If a Supervisor then applies a certain Channel to a user, this controls what they have access to in the Extension.

How it Works

Think of the Extensions as a container. Within the container, there are a lot of features and products. Every feature or product can be a channel, which means that the Supervisor can grant access to a specific channel or group of channels for different users or user groups.

The Supervisor can assign channels to different users through drag and drop and the users will immediately get the updates in the program. To make it even easier for the Supervisor, he/she can create predefined filters with multiple channels and assign these to one or several email addresses or domain names.

How Do I Add It to My Extension?

This step-by-step walkthrough will guide you through creating a custom channel as an example.

1. Go into your Project

    

2. Press the Edit button

    

3. This will give you an overview of the Extension.

    

4. Somewhere in the bottom left, you will see the Channels. Clicking the Open button will open a dialog. Here you can input the name of the Channel, the key and value, and which users should be added to the Channel.
   

   The key and value will be important for the developer as they will be used coded into the Extension. Changing these will also require code changes to be done.

    

5. Once the Channel is created, you can click Show next to generate a sample code for the developer to place in the Extension.

   

   This will open a dialog with a sample code you can add to your Extension's extension.cm.

   

   Basically, mcOverlord has the profile data of the current user, then uses registerProfileDataCallback() to call channelCallback().
   channelCallback() will gather the keys and values placed in step 4, according to the users added to the channel.

6. Do not forget to hit the Save button in the bottom left after you have made your changes.

Channel Types

Altogether there are 3 channel types: catalogue, custom, and filter.

Catalogue Channels

A Catalogue Channel is created automatically when its Portfolio is saved from Catalogue Creator. It's used to control which users have access to each Catalogue.

Custom Channels

Custom Channels are created only by Developers of the Extension on the Edit Extension page. These channels can control anything within the Extension for different users.

Custom channels require a key and value in which if you are a user in the channel, inquiring about the key will give you the decided value.
On the flip side, if inquiring about the key gives you a different value than the decided one, the Extension knows that this user does not belong within this channel.

Filter Channels

Filter Channels are created when using the Filter page as a Supervisor of an Extension. It is able to control multiple Catalogue and Custom Channels applying additional users to these channels.