Configuring Subscription in EPiServer CMS 5

Introduction

Setting up Subscription

The three basic parts of subscription in EPiServer CMS are:

• At least one page where the EPSUBSCRIBE property is set to true
• A page exposing the SubscriptionList Web control that handles loading and saving of subscription information
• The Subscription scheduled job

Each page where EPSUBSCRIBE is set to true will act as a root page for a subscription branch - information about changes made to this page and it's substructure may be sent out via subscription mail. If you don't want a page in the subscription branch to be included in subscription mail you can set the EPSUBSCRIBE-EXCLUDE property to true for this page.

The SubscriptionList web controls allows users to apply for and configure their subscription. This control will list all pages where EPSUBSCRIBE is set to true in a checkbox list allowing the user to subscribe to one or several subscription branches.

The language in which the subscription page is displayed determines which language the user will be subscribing to. For example, if the user applies for a subscription on the english version of the subscription page he/she will receive subscription information about all english pages that have been modifiedroots in the selected subscription branches. Please see the SubscriptionPage template in our basic template package for an example on how the SubscriptionList control can be used.

The subscription job is responsible for determining which pages have been updated and formatting/sending subscription mail. Make sure that this scheduled job is active and running by looking at the job's configuration in admin mode.

Note: Subscription mail is sent on a subscription root and language basis, this means that a user subscribing to two subscription roots in two languages will receive a maximum of four mails depending on how many languages and roots have been updated when the subscription job is run.

Modifying the content of subscription mail

By default the from-address, subject, introduction and link titles used in the subscription mail will all use hard coded values or values fetched from the language files. The subscription job allows the default values to be overridden and it determins if that is the case by looking for specifically named properties on the subscription root pages. It does not matter if the properties are dynamic or placed on the subscription root's PageType. The following table specifies the properties that can be overridden, their default values and the name of the override property that the subscription job looks for.