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Folders: Organization and Content In One

In Crystallize, folders form your catalogue’s hierarchical structure. You can also have them display content, similar to a document. Once you’ve created one or more folder shapes within your tenant, you’re ready to create folders based off of those shapes.

Read more about folders to get a feel for how you might use them. Whenever you’re ready to make some of your own, you’ll find the process is quite similar to document creation.

Creating a New Folder

To get started, you’ll first need the requisite permissions for the Tree within your tenant (item access, creation, etc). Refer to our documentation on roles and permissions for more information.

Once you have the necessary access, open the Crystallize App and click the Catalogue button on the left side of the screen. From here, click either the Folder button in the center of the screen or the Create+ button at the bottom. You can also bring up the command palette with CTRL+K or ⌘+K and type “Create Item,” then select the Folder option.

Here, you’ll see all of the folder shapes that have been defined within your tenant. Click on a shape to see all of its components, or use the Expand all shapes toggle to view all components for every shape.

Click on a shape to select it, type in a name for your folder at the top of the screen, then hit Enter or click Create.

Adding and Editing Folder Content

Adding content to a folder is simply a matter of populating its components. These components come from your folder shape and may contain placeholders for text, images, videos, properties tables, related items, and more. Hover your mouse over each component’s name to see the description that was specified for it (if any). Refer to our documentation on components if you need information about any specific component.

As you enter or edit information, all changes are automatically saved, but they won’t be made publicly available until you click the Publish or Publish changes button at the top of the screen. For items contained within one or more folders, those folders must be published, along with the items themselves, to make the items publicly available. Each time you publish your folder, Crystallize saves an archive of the previously published version. Refer to our archiving documentation for more information.

To edit a folder, you need to hover your mouse over the folder until a pencil icon appears, then click on that icon. If you simply click on the folder, you will browse into it instead.

Catalogue edit button

Duplicating Folders

To duplicate a folder, click on the action menu (…) at the top of the screen and choose Duplicate item. Note that this process will only duplicate the folder itself, and not the items it contains. Type in a name for the duplicate, then drag and drop a folder from the left-hand catalogue pane to choose a destination for it. You can also choose whether or not to copy the content of the folder story components. Click the Duplicate folder button to complete the process.

Duplicate Folder screen

Custom Views

If you have one or more custom views set up for your tenant, you can access them via the Views dropdown at the top of the screen. Refer to our custom views documentation for more info.

Frontend preview folder

Folders in Multiple Languages

If you’ve defined multiple languages within your tenant, there will be a translation of your folder for each of these languages. You can switch between different translations using the Language drop-down at the top of the screen. Refer to our Configuring Languages page for more information.

Paths

It’s possible for a folder to reside in multiple places throughout the catalogue via shortcuts. Folders can also be given aliases to make them easier to reference within URLs. To manage these additional paths, open the Views drop-down and select Paths. In addition to current paths and names, historical paths and names for the folder are also displayed here.

Folder-Related Webhooks

You can (optionally) set up webhooks to subscribe to folder-related events. In Crystallize, events are fired whenever folders are

  • Created
  • Updated
  • Deleted
  • Published
  • Unpublished

You can set up a webhook, then come up with your own way of responding to events. For instance, you could set up an automatic notification to go to a senior content editor if any structural changes are made to the catalogue. For more information, read about defining webhooks here.

Unpublishing and Deleting Folders from the Catalogue

To unpublish a folder and revoke it from being publicly available, click the action button (...) at the top of the screen and choose either Unpublish or Unpublish all languages (in a multilingual setup). Note that unpublishing a folder will also unpublish all of its child items.

To delete a folder, click the action button (...) at the top of the screen and choose Delete. Once a folder is deleted, it’s gone for good, along with any other folders, documents, or products it may have contained. Proceed carefully with deletion.

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