An Immediacy plug-in is a special type of ASP.NET User Control that allows you to extend the functionality of the core content management system. http://www.immediacy.net/

Follow these instructions to create a custom plug-in for the Immediacy/CMC CMS.

Instructions

Create a new directory within the Immediacy plug-ins directory for your plug-in. This new directory will hold the .ascx file for your user control plus your Immediacy editor dialogue UI (Which is a special web file that allows you to change the plug-in settings from within the Immediacy editor).

The name of your plug-in directory should have the same name as the “tagName” you use to register the User Control in Immediacy’s web.config file.

Build your ASP.NET User Control to perform your custom functionality making sure that you create public properties in your C#/VB.NET code for all the properties you would like configurable from within the Immediacy editor.

Add a reference to the Immediacy.Web assembly to your project.

Next, add these attributes to your User Control class.

[PluginDesigner(PluginDesignerType.Html, "PluginCmsDialogue.aspx", Height = 400, Width = 400)]
[ToolboxData("<{0}:PluginName runat=server></{0}:PluginName>")]
[PluginInfo("My First Plug-in", "CMS Plug-in Category", Description = "Description of my Plug-in")]
public partial class Comments : System.Web.UI.UserControl, INamingContainer
{
    // Your plug-in code here
}

If you don’t add these class attributes your plug-in properties will not be configurable from within Immediacy, but the plug-in will still work.
If you don’t have public properties that you want editors to be able to change you can skip creating a dialogue box for your plug-in.

Create an Editor Dialogue Pop-up

Create a CMS dialogue page which will allow Immediacy users to change the properties of your custom plug-in from within the editor. The name of this file is referenced in the class attributes above (e.g. PluginCmsDialogue.aspx) .

Your dialogue box can be either an HTML file with JavaScript or an ASP.NET web form. This example uses an HTML page with a .aspx extension, although it doesn’t contain any server-side code. 

In the HTML you need to reference the Helpers.js JavaScript file that resides in the Immediacy plug-ins folder.

<script type="text/javascript" src="../Helpers.js"></script>

Create a simple HTML form with form elements to match each public property of your plug-in class.

Add two HTML buttons, one for OK, one for Cancel. Give them IDs of ok and cancel respectively.

Create a JavaScript function called Init() as below.

<script type="text/javascript">
var Dialog;

function Init()
{
   Dialog=new DialogObject("name of plugin", 400, 400); Dialog.UniqueKeys=false;

   // Load each property and update the dialogue box
   Dialog.Load("property", function(value){document.getElementById("property").value=value;});

   // Add functionality to the OK and Cancel HTML buttons
   document.getElementById("ok").onclick=function(){Dialog.Ok();}
   document.getElementById("cancel").onclick=function(){Dialog.Cancel();}

   Dialog.Valid=function()
   {
      // Perform validation here
      return true;
   }

   Dialog.Submit=function()
   {
      // Save each property
      Dialog.Save("property",document.getElementById("property ").value);

      // Update the Immediacy control UI placeholder
      Dialog.InnerHTML="<div style='background:#DDDDDD; color:#000000; float:left; padding:10px; clear:both;'><strong>Comments Enabled : </strong>Status of Plug-in</div>";
   }
}
</script>

At the bottom of your dialogue HTML call the Init() function as below.

<script type="text/javascript">Init();</script>

Install the Plug-in

Register your ASP.NET User Control to Immediacy’s web.config under <pages><controls> as you would with an ordinary User Control. Ensure the “tagName” is the same as the plugin directory name for your plugin.

<add tagPrefix="MyUserControls" tagName="PluginName" src="~/plugins/ PluginName /test.ascx"/>

Build your project in Visual Studio.

Copy the .ascx and your dialogue box HTML file to the /plugins/PluginName folder.

Copy the .dll file to the Immediacy bin folder.

I needed a simple Windows Service to request a web page at set intervals indefinitely. Windows Services are the best way of doing this as they have the ability to start automatically when the computer boots up and can be paused, stopped and restarted. You can also get them to write events to the Windows Event log.

I found this Windows Service sample tutorial on The Code Project and downloaded the code to familiarise myself with the basics. The tutorial lacked a timer and the code to request a URL though so I had to add this functionality.

Visual Studio Standard edition doesn't have a Windows Service template, but you can still create a Windows Service, you just need to do a bit of extra work.

After some research and a bit of coding I added two new methods:

private void ServiceTimer_Tick(object sender, ElapsedEventArgs e)
{
this.timer.Stop();
DoWork();
this.timer.Start();
}

void DoWork()
{
WebClient client = new WebClient();
client.Headers.Add("user-agent", "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.2; .NET CLR 1.0.3705;)");

Stream data = client.OpenRead(URL to request here);
client.Dispose();
data.Dispose();
}

I overrode the OnStart() method of ServiceBase to enable the timer and start it. I also overrode the OnStop() method to disable the timer.

The DoWork() method simply creates an instance of WebClient and reads in the URL you want to request.

Then in the constructor I set the timer interval and added an event handler to raise the ServiceTimer event when the interval elapses. The event handler simply stops the timer, calls the DoWork() method and then restarts the timer.

public static void Main()
{
ServiceBase.Run(new Service3());
}

public Service3()
{

InitializeComponent();
// Duration 1 hour
double interval = 3600000;

timer = new Timer(interval);
timer.Elapsed += new ElapsedEventHandler(this.ServiceTimer_Tick);

}

To install the Service you need to publish the project in Visual Studio. Then use InstallUtil.exe following the process below:

1. Open a Visual Studio .NET Command Prompt
2. Change to the bin\Debug directory of your project location (bin\Release if you compiled in release mode)
3. Issue the command InstallUtil.exe MyWindowsService.exe to register the service and have it create the appropriate registry entries
4. Open the Computer Management console by right clicking on My Computer on the desktop and selecting Manage
5. In the Services section underneath Services and Applications you should now see your Windows Service included in the list of services
6. Start your service by right clicking on it and selecting Start

Each time you need to change your Windows Service it will require you to uninstall and reinstall the service. Prior to uninstalling the service make sure you close the Services management console. To uninstall the service simply reissue the same InstallUtil command used to register the service and add the /u command switch.

e.g. InstallUtil.exe /u MyWindowsService.exe

When you install the service on a server you can find the InstallUtil.exe in the .NET framework folder e.g. C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727

I've been busy creating some use-cases in Visio 2007 for an upcoming project and from what I can gather either Microsoft has not implemented the current UML 2.0 standard and stuck with an older version, or it decided what parts of the specification to implement.

Either way it's a little annoying, I'm having to spend extra time working out what was the equivalent diagram or notation in UML 1.2 was in order to draw it in Visio.

An example of this would be where you link two Use-Cases with the «include» relationship. This doesn't seem to exist in Visio, so it looks like you have to make do with the «uses» stereotype instead, which was replaced in the current standard.

A few other Visio bug-bears would be the sparse Use-Case documentation interface. It doesn't allow rich text, so adding more than a few lines of text could become very hard to read. Microsoft also seem to leave it up to the modeller to format their own use-case specification; but with such a poor interface I can't see how you could use table-orientated steps to make a sequence of events more readable.

Surely allowing attachments (in the form of Microsoft Word) to be added would make more sense?