System properties

Introduction to system properties in ConSol CM

System properties are used to store settings for the ConSol CM system. The settings are used in different areas, for example to configure the email functionality, determine the authentication method, or fine-tune the index.

Changes to the system properties take effect immediately in most cases. Please always check the property documentation and consider the impact of the new value before modifying a system property.

Concepts, terms and definitions

Concept	Other terms	Definition
system property		System property which is predefined in ConSol CM.
custom property	custom system property	System property defined by the administrator during the configuration of the ConSol CM system.

Purpose and usage

System properties are used to provide global settings for ConSol CM and to configure ConSol CM components, as for example the email system or the index. In addition, system properties can be used to store global variables for scripts in order to provide a convenient way of managing settings which are needed in workflows and scripts, as for example reaction times, email addresses needed in the process, or the URL where ConSol CM is deployed.

Available settings for system properties

Regular system properties vs. custom system properties

There are two kinds of system properties: the properties which are predefined in ConSol CM and the properties which are defined by the administrator during the configuration of the ConSol CM system.

• System properties:
  Predefined properties with a specific meaning / function in ConSol CM. Depending on their usage, properties are either:

  • Added automatically during the setup or update of ConSol CM. Automatically added properties might be prefilled with a default value.
  • Added and filled automatically when performing certain operations in the Web Admin Suite.
  • Added manually by the administrator.

  You can display the documentation of each system property by clicking the documentation icon in the property details. See List of system properties for a complete list.

• Custom properties:
  Properties defined by the customer. The administrator can define additional properties during the configuration of the ConSol CM system. These properties provide a convenient way to pass global variables to scripts, as they can be modified without having to edit the script itself. Common use cases for custom properties are to set reaction times, define email addresses needed during the process or save the system URL.

  Best practice

  Always add descriptions when creating custom properties. The description should explain the purpose of the property and the possible value range. This is especially important for integer properties where the unit of measurement is essential.

Fields

The following fields are available for system properties:

• Module:
  Mandatory. The area which the system property belongs to.

  The module name of custom properties should start with custom-. Please see Importing and exporting system properties for details.

  You can either select an existing module from the list of autocomplete suggestions or create a new module by entering the desired module name and clicking the Create new value: <module name> option in the autocomplete suggestions.

• Property:
  Mandatory. The name of the system property, must be unique within the module.

• Type:
  Mandatory. The data type of the property’s value. Possible data types are:

  • String: Text field.
  • Password: Password field, the value is displayed as dots.
  • Email: Email field, the value must have a valid format for email addresses (<address>@<domain>).
  • Boolean: Boolean field, possible values are true, false and empty (only if the property is optional).
  • Integer: Number field, the value must be a number without fractional part.

• Value
  The value of the system property. The value is mandatory if the property is not optional. Otherwise, it can be empty. The value must conform to the selected type.

• Description
  Optional. A text with the description of the property.

  Best practice

  Always add descriptions when creating custom properties. The description should explain the purpose of the property and the possible value range. This is especially important for integer properties where the unit of measurement is essential.

• Restart required
  Mandatory. If this checkbox is selected, a restart of the ConSol CM server is required for changes to become effective. For most system properties, the value is read-only.

• Optional
  Mandatory. If this checkbox is selected, the property is optional, meaning that its value can be empty. Otherwise, the value is mandatory and the property cannot be deleted.

  Editing the Optional checkbox is not possible for properties which are required for operating ConSol CM. These properties have a special database flag which prevents the user from setting them to optional.

• Accessible via REST
  Mandatory. If this checkbox is selected, the property’s value can be retrieved using the REST API. Please see the ConSol CM REST API Documentation for details.

  A regular ConSol CM user account is sufficient to retrieve system properties via REST. Make sure not to expose sensitive data which regular users should not have access to.

Basic tasks

Finding a system property

The list of system properties is displayed directly after accessing the System properties page of the Web Admin Suite. You can filter the list to locate system properties more easily:

• Text search: Perform a free text search.

  Enter a text in the Search field to filter by module, property name, value or type.

• Modules: Choose to display only the system properties which belong to a specific module.

  Select the module in the All modules drop-down list.

• Type of property: Choose to display only predefined properties or custom properties.

  Select System properties or Custom properties from the All properties drop-down list.

Managing system properties

You can perform the following actions on system properties:

• Create a new property
  Click the New property button above the list of properties and enter the required values.

  If the new property is similar to an existing property, you can prefill the New property screen with the data of an existing property by clicking the Duplicate icon in this property’s row.

• Edit a property
  Click the Edit icon or the property’s row and update the desired data in the edit panel on the right.

• Delete a property
  You can delete optional properties by clicking the Delete icon. To delete several properties at once, select them and click the Delete icon at the top of the table.

• Display property documentation
  You can show the documentation of a system property by clicking the Documentation icon in the property details. The documentation is displayed in a modal window.

Advanced tasks

Using system properties in scripts

You can use system properties to store global variables which can be used later in scripts. This is convenient because the values can be changed easily later on without having to adapt the scripts. Examples for global variables can be reaction times, email addresses needed during the process or the system URL.

The following method retrieves the value of a system property:

configurationService.getValue(String pModule, String pProperty)

Importing and exporting system properties

System properties are handled in a specific way when using the scene import/export functionality. The predefined system properties are never included in the scene export. Custom properties are only included if their module name starts with custom-. This is due to the fact that the import/export functionality is frequently used to transfer data from development or test systems to production systems. Specific values might be required on each system, e.g., for email settings, and it might not be desired to overwrite these values when importing a scene.

Please see Staging for details about this functionality.