General Guidance - Umbraco with enterprise capabilities
Hello,
We are currently exploring Umbraco to help us replace our current enterprise application. I have looked into Umbraco and I am thinking that in order to meet my application requirements, I'll have to extend Umbraco to match our business rules. Below I have a few questions around my concerns of Umbraco's abilities. If the ability exists at all for any of my questions, please let me know. I understand we can probably program all this functionality to a degree, but perhaps maybe we don't need too. Perhaps plug-ins exist already that are free or paid. In any case we would love to know our options. If you know of any great resources, that could help guide us along our path, please let us know as well.
1. Can someone explain to me the idea behind the back-office?
I was thinking that the back office is used to lay out pages and modify content. I want users to be able to come to our website and login. Depending on the user and it's roles I want to present them with there own data, tied to a separate database and allow them to insert data records of any type to manage their corporate information.
It appears the back-office does this or allows extending the back-office to provide this functionality. Should the back-office be used only for Web designers/developers and then extend the front end to allow corporate users to use the site to manage their data records?
2. Can Umbraco handle multiple sites?
As mentioned above, users will be able to see data based upon their role. I understand this will have to be programmed/configured whether with what Umbraco currently allows, or to what we require.
Ultimately can Umbraco use sub-domains in place of users roles, so that depending on the sub-domain that client sees only their data.
I know Umbraco can support multiple sites for different languages. Our requirements require multiple languages as well, but also for separation of data.
3. Can Umbraco front-end live in SQL, while corporate data lives in a different database, whether it be SQL or Oracle?
I'm under the impression that it can, but is it a good idea?
- Can the multiple site functionality allow for different back-end customization's for the front-end?
Say for example we have clients that do not want to have a standard configuration layout. Can we separate the layout differences between user roles/sub-domain/site.
Back Office Editing. I would not recommend extending the frontend to support editing of data in a separate database (unless there are individuals from a third party that you don't want to give CMS access to). Rather, I'd recommend extending the back office to perform that editing. One instance I have done this for was to replace the member section of Umbraco. I created an entirely new member section (and hid the old one), and all edits were stored to a different database. You don't need to create your own section though. You can create property editors on content nodes that provide a similar experience. Or you can create a dashboard in one of the existing sections (such as the content section) that isn't tied to a particular content node.
Multiple Sites. Umbraco natively supports multiple sites. If you architect it properly, you can have each site have a separate root node that contains all of the content for the site. You can set permissions for users so that they can only see the content under those root nodes. Permissions can be clunky in Umbraco, so you may run into some awkwardness here, but it should at least be possible. This project I helped to upgrade to Umbraco 7 may help with some of those issues: https://our.umbraco.org/projects/backoffice-extensions/user-group-permissions/
Multiple Databases. Yes, you can grab data from Umbraco's SQL database and from other databases of any sort. It can be a good idea depending on the type of data. Also, yes, you can customize each site so that they look different and have different capabilities. You'd simply create different document types and different templates. You could of course share functionality, but you wouldn't have to make each site identical.
The site that I need to create is going to workflow intensive. We aren't going to even have much of a front end if the back office is used for this.
Let's say I have a client that reaches our front end home page, where they can log in. Once they login, then they will see additional elements of that front end specific to the user/corporation. In there they would alter, and edit data related to their business workflows.
Let's say the user has to enter data into data bound grid views, for a particular product. They can use CRUD operations in regards to products and any sub-component of that product.
In my mind, the back office would only be used to provide the layout and structure, or even specify some workflow rules that surround our custom data types. The front end elements would then read from the rules/configuration to be sure the data is captured and placed accordingly into the database.
Do you still believe the back office should be used for this process? Or that using the Back Office would be the best solution for such a complex requirement?
General Guidance - Umbraco with enterprise capabilities
Hello,
We are currently exploring Umbraco to help us replace our current enterprise application. I have looked into Umbraco and I am thinking that in order to meet my application requirements, I'll have to extend Umbraco to match our business rules. Below I have a few questions around my concerns of Umbraco's abilities. If the ability exists at all for any of my questions, please let me know. I understand we can probably program all this functionality to a degree, but perhaps maybe we don't need too. Perhaps plug-ins exist already that are free or paid. In any case we would love to know our options. If you know of any great resources, that could help guide us along our path, please let us know as well.
1. Can someone explain to me the idea behind the back-office?
I was thinking that the back office is used to lay out pages and modify content. I want users to be able to come to our website and login. Depending on the user and it's roles I want to present them with there own data, tied to a separate database and allow them to insert data records of any type to manage their corporate information.
It appears the back-office does this or allows extending the back-office to provide this functionality. Should the back-office be used only for Web designers/developers and then extend the front end to allow corporate users to use the site to manage their data records?
2. Can Umbraco handle multiple sites?
As mentioned above, users will be able to see data based upon their role. I understand this will have to be programmed/configured whether with what Umbraco currently allows, or to what we require.
Ultimately can Umbraco use sub-domains in place of users roles, so that depending on the sub-domain that client sees only their data.
I know Umbraco can support multiple sites for different languages. Our requirements require multiple languages as well, but also for separation of data.
3. Can Umbraco front-end live in SQL, while corporate data lives in a different database, whether it be SQL or Oracle?
I'm under the impression that it can, but is it a good idea?
- Can the multiple site functionality allow for different back-end customization's for the front-end?
Say for example we have clients that do not want to have a standard configuration layout. Can we separate the layout differences between user roles/sub-domain/site.
Let's dive more into the Back Office portion:
The site that I need to create is going to workflow intensive. We aren't going to even have much of a front end if the back office is used for this.
Let's say I have a client that reaches our front end home page, where they can log in. Once they login, then they will see additional elements of that front end specific to the user/corporation. In there they would alter, and edit data related to their business workflows.
Let's say the user has to enter data into data bound grid views, for a particular product. They can use CRUD operations in regards to products and any sub-component of that product.
In my mind, the back office would only be used to provide the layout and structure, or even specify some workflow rules that surround our custom data types. The front end elements would then read from the rules/configuration to be sure the data is captured and placed accordingly into the database.
Do you still believe the back office should be used for this process? Or that using the Back Office would be the best solution for such a complex requirement?
If it's for a client, it makes sense for the editing experience to be on the frontend of the website.
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