Perspectives

New feature in Tiki4. Please also see: Workspace

Perspectives are useful to override a preference depending on a category of an object assigned to a perspective or simply by switching the perspective view. Think Theme Control but for any of 1000 preferences. In fact, it's all the Preferences that have been converted to Dynamic preferences less the features which shouldn't be override-able per workspace.

1.1. Configure perspectives

As a user with admin rights:

1. Ensure that you have enabled the feature (Admin > Features)
2. Create one perspective through tiki-edit_perspective.php. Provide any name.
3. Search for preferences at the search box that you will see at the bottom. For instance, logo, theme, site title, home page, ...
4. Once found the preference that you were looking for, drag and drop it on the section above corresponding to the perspective that you have created.
5. Repeat the previous step as many times as needed
6. Click on Save

You can edit this perspective at any time on a later stage.

If using different subdomains, you can set them up linked to perspectives through:
Admin > General > General configuration > Multi-domain > Multi-domain Configuration:

• subdomain1, 1
• subdomain2, 2
• whateverdomain, IdX

1.2. Use perspectives

You can use the Perspective module included in Tiki to change perspectives. See: module perspective

Another trick is to use a link like

tiki-index_raw.php?page=testpage&perspectiveId=4

This is a one time use of that perspective, as after, the perspective reverts back.

1.3. Admin perspectives

Starting in Tiki5, you can manage via tiki-edit_perspective.php (It is probably better to be in the default perspective when you are using tiki-edit_perspective.php)

1.4. Test profile

To get going quickly, you can use the Jailroot demonstration.

1.5. Switch perspective

Besides using the Perspective module, switching perspectives can be invoked by calling the tiki-switch_perspective.php script; e.g., tiki-switch_perspective.php?perspective=3 will switch to the Perspective ID 3. Calling it alone without the perspective parameter will switch it back to the default site view.

Starting in Tiki7, you can switch and stay on the same page by adding a &back to the switch perspective link.

1.6. Plugin Perspective

• PluginPerspective permits to display content based on the reader's current perspective

1.7. Mobile

Mobile mode is essentially a mobile view perspective. If you want some modules to appear or not to appear in your mobile perspective, find out what your mobile perspective ID is (tiki-edit_perspective.php) and configure Modules accordingly. For example, If you wish to hide your login box in mobile version (mobile perspective) of your website, then simply go to Admin > Modules > login_box > Visibility > Perspective and enter value "0" and click Assign. By doing so your login box would be visible only to your original website view and invisible to your mobile perspective. This method can be used to simplify your mobile version (to load less modules).

• Note: "0" is default perspective for Tiki website while "1" or "2" etc. are for custom made perspectives.

1.8. Simple explanation of perspectives, categories, category jail, etc.

• Perspectives:
  different points of view / layers of the website

• Categories:
  "responsible" for an important part of the roles&rights / permissions management

• Category jail:
  applies to a perspective and is kind of a preference
  limits search results and listings to content wich categories are applied to a category jail in a perspective
  categories IDs are typed in as numbers, seperated by semicolons
  search results just give the typed in perspectives
  all content can be seen in all perspectives at this point, if appropriate rights

Tip:

For a start, I just name the perspectives and categories the same way and set them up in the same order.
So the first some same named categories and perspectives have the same Ids, what eases work especially for a beginner with that.

At some point, thats not working out any more, but then it woulkd be still possible to remind the IDs to the names.
Names of perspectives and categories should apply either to the content or to the use case of the perspective or to both, if possible That eases life aswell.

• Perspectives plus categories -> workspaces:
  with perspectives and categories and some kind of smart structuring you can +create kind of "logical areas" in between the Tiki website.
  that means you can create spaces for workgroups, usergroups, subwebsites, etc.
  perspectives and categories are the features with that you can create workspaces, thus a workspace is more a logical area of the site and not a feature by itself.

• Multidomain
  using for example subdomains for workspaces, not only the categories can be jailed in respect of search results and listing, but further more the hole content of different perspectives can be kept apart from each other independently.

• Switch perspective and stay at content
  recently a nice feature was added by Louis-Philippe:
  at the perspectives module, there is a tick box now, where you can set either switching the perspective staying in the existing content, for ex. to just get different modules or to switch to the new perspective's home page.

• Go to a specific page in a specific perspective
  once you type the address https://foo.bar/PageName, you will be sent to PageName in the default perspective.
  using perspectives for navigation purposes you would need a number of subdomains, if you´d like users be able to copy and paste links to appropriate content/perspective combinations
  using additional ?perspectiveId=X in the context: http://foo.bar/PageName?perspectiveId=X you will be linked to PageName in Perspective X (thank LPH for mentioning that)
  a shortener like http://foo.bar/PageName?PId=X is requested.

• Next focus
  next to learn would be how to use Datachannels on the one hand – to setup automatically a set of a number of perspectives / categories / workspaces / project management tools with preset configuration
  and
  organic group including leadership and demoting / promoting etc.

1.9. FAQ-alike IRC conversation (helpful)

Following an excerpt of an IRC conversation between mikebeary and nkoth, that the both guys allowed to use for the documentation:

• workspace
• Perspective Handler

• Perspective