Sitecore 9 - Creating Custom Marketing Automation Activity Part-2

I am going to build user interface part of custom activity. As we saw in previous post, we have a parameter called "ProcessLimit" in activity implementation. So, we should provide a UI to marketing managers that can set it from marketing automation panel.

I don't want to repeat the official documentation, I will only show some key parts.

I started with creating package.json file. When you follow official documentation, you see that you need those packages as required.

• @angular/core: 5.2.11
• @angular/http: 5.2.11
• @ngx-translate/core: 9.0.2
• rxjs: 5.5.11

You will get warning in terminal if there is any package missing, I added step by step and my final package.json file was like this:

{
  "name": "package",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "Playground Demo",
  "private": true,
  "angular-cli": {},
  "scripts": {
    "dev": "ngc -p ./src/tsconfig.aot.json && npm run build",
    "build": "webpack --display-error-details"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "@angular/common": "5.2.11",
    "@angular/compiler": "7.2.4",
    "@angular/compiler-cli": "^7.2.4",
    "@angular/core": "5.2.11",
    "@angular/forms": "5.2.11",
    "@angular/http": "5.2.11",
    "@angular/platform-browser": "5.2.11",
    "@ngx-translate/core": "^9.0.2",
    "@sitecore/ma-core": "file:C:/Playground/Playground.Angular/MarketingAutomation/packages/ma-core",
    "rxjs": "^5.5.11",
    "typescript": "3.2.4",
    "zone.js": "^0.8.4"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "ts-loader": "^5.3.3",
    "webpack": "^4.29.3",
    "webpack-cli": "^3.2.3"
  },
  "main": "index.js",
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC"
}

An important dependency is "@sitecore/ma-core". Sitecore provides a package to use as base and build our UI. We need to give the ma-core path which inside MarketingAutomation folder.

The folder structure is below, you can see an overview what kind of files you will have at the end.

Another important thing is id in plugin.ts file. The Sitecore id of created activity type must be lower case and without curly brackets.

import { Plugin } from '@sitecore/ma-core';
import { SendMoviesToExpressActivity }  from './send-movies-to-express.activity';
import { EditorComponent } from '../codegen/editor/editor.component';
import { SendMoviesToExpressModuleNgFactory } from '../codegen/send-movies-to-express-module.ngfactory'

@Plugin({
    activityDefinitions: [ 
        {
            // The ID must match the ID of the activity type description definition item in the CMS.

            // Must be lowercase and without curly brackets
        id: 'c61c5489-b11b-40f1-ab36-23eb044c2e69',
            activity: SendMoviesToExpressActivity,
            editorComponenet: EditorComponent,
            editorModuleFactory: SendMoviesToExpressModuleNgFactory
        }
    ]
})
export default class SendMoviesToExpressPlugin {}

You will see the activity component implementation below. Remember that we defined parameter name as ProcessLimit in code. Here, it must start with lowercase "processLimit".

import { SingleItem } from '@sitecore/ma-core';

export class SendMoviesToExpressActivity extends SingleItem {

    getVisual(): string {
        const subTitle = this.isDefined ? 'Process Count: ' + this.editorParams.processLimit : '';
        const cssClass = this.isDefined ? '' : 'undefined';

        //CSS class can either be makreting-action or other-element
        return `
            <div class="viewport-readonly-editor marketing-action ${cssClass}">
                <span class="icon">
                    <img src="/~/icon/OfficeWhite/32x32/arrow_right.png" />
                </span>
                <p class="text with-subtitle" title="Send movies">
                    Send movies
                    <small class="subtitle" title="${subTitle}">${subTitle}</small>
                </p>
            </div>
        `;
    }

    get isDefined(): boolean {
        /*
        The editorParams propery value is the object that is serialized from the activity editor.
        If the activity is undefined the editorParams propery will evaluate to {}
        */
        return Boolean(this.editorParams.processLimit);
    }
}

Editor component has an input field to set our parameter.

import { Component, OnInit, Injector } from '@angular/core';
import { EditorBase } from '@sitecore/ma-core';
 
@Component({
    selector: 'readonly-editor',
            template: `
        <section class="content">
            <div class="form-group">
                <div class="row readonly-editor">
                    <label class="col-6 title">Process Limit</label>
                    <div class="col-6">
                        <input type="number" class="form-control" [(ngModel)]="processLimit"/>
                   </div>
                </div>
            </div>
        </section>
    `,
    //CSS Styles are ommitted for brevity
    styles: ['']
})
 
export class EditorComponent extends EditorBase implements OnInit {

    processLimit: number;

    constructor(private injector: Injector) {
        super();
    }
 
    ngOnInit(): void { 
        this.processLimit = this.model ? this.model.processLimit || 0 : 0;
    }

    serialize(): any {
        return {  
            processLimit: this.processLimit
        };
    }
}

Once you are done with components. you can build your app with "npm run dev" command. If there is no error, you will get an bundled js file which include all necessary things.

There are two things left to make it work at this moment. First, I copied this js file and pasted under plugins folder (C:\inetpub\wwwroot\yourwebsite\sitecore\shell\client\Applications\MarketingAutomation\plugins). Then, added a configuration file under App_Config/Include folder to register js file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/" xmlns:set="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/set/" xmlns:role="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/role/">
  <sitecore role:require="Standalone or ContentManagement or DedicatedDispatch">
    <marketingAutomation>
    <pluginDescriptorsRepository>
      <plugins>
        <!-- Assuming that the plugin bundle file name is sample.plugin.js and is deployed directly under the plugins folder -->
        <plugin path="./plugins/send-movies.plugin.js" />
      </plugins>
    </pluginDescriptorsRepository>
    </marketingAutomation>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

At the end my custom action looked like this:

That's it! You can test and you can debug your code as I showed in previous posts.