Dynamic Converter

Dynamic Conveter (DC) is the poster boy of UCM product suite. This is one feature that can clinch any WCM deals in its favour. This is Oracles trump card. Ok... enough of bragging lets see what DC can actually accomplish.
For starters you can configure DC to your content regions and drive the contents of the webpage through Word Documents. We can go a step further and run your complete website through word documents without compramising on branding. We can map the MS word styles to specific css look and feel. DC supports hosts of other document formats.
Below are the steps to configure DC to your website. Here are assumptions I make.

• You already have Dynamic Converter installed.
• You have created a primary layout page with a content region.
• You have created a Dynamic Converter template.(Creating templates is a topic for another blog)

Once you have the above things in place here is what you need to do to see word documents as webpages.

Create Template Selection Rule.

1. Login to Content Server
2. Go to Administration --> Dynamic Converter Admin
3. Give suitable name for the new rule.
4. Create a critiria, this will be the case when this rule will be selected. Ex: Apply rules on content with Type News.
5. Select a template, this will be applied to the document to retain the branding of your website.
6. File extention should always be "hcst" DC inserts idoc scripts for the word documents while convertion. These would be executed before rendering as a webpage.
7. Forced Convertion and Exclude from User Request is self explanatory. Althoug in my experience its better to uncheck Forced Convertion for performance resons.

Assign Selection Rule to Content Region

Now that you have a Template Selection Rule you have to assign this rule to the content regions in your layouts. Here is how you do this.

1. Goto your layout page
2. Double click on Content Region.
3. Click on Settings.
4. Slelect the radio button Use Single Rule Dynamic Conversion
5. Choose the Template rule you have created.
6. Click OK
   To see the magic of DC veiw your layout page is browser and get into contribution mode and select a word document.