Installing the Extended Properties Feature

This document provides information about installing the Extended Properties add-on to enable the extended properties and workflow feature on the API Platform.

Table of Contents

What is the Extended Properties feature?

The Extended Properties feature is an add-on feature, available for use with the Akana API Platform, that allows you to set up and use configurable custom properties, along with workflows based on those properties.

Custom properties are supported for the following resource types:

  • API
  • App
  • User

For more information on using this feature with the Community Manager developer portal, see Using Custom Metadata in the Community Manager developer portal.

Note: Extended Properties and Lifecycle Coordinator both leverage the underlying capabilities of Lifecycle Repository to extend Community Manager functionality. Extended Properties is an optional feature of the Akana API Platform, and Lifecycle Coordinator is a separate product.

They offer completely different feature sets:

  • The Extended Properties feature allows you to define custom properties and gather custom information from Community Manager developer portal users.
  • Lifecycle Coordinator allows you to define a one-way topology that includes a chain of environments reflecting the development lifecycle. For example, the topology chain could be from Development to Testing to Staging to Production. Each environment is a separate installation of the Community Manager developer portal.

    Lifecycle Coordinator is a standalone user interface that's installed separately. This feature also includes modifications to the Community Manager developer portal user interface to allow the API Admin or app developer to promote the app or API to the next environment.

Installation process

The process below assumes you already have:

To install the Extended Properties feature

  1. In the same container as Community Manager, install this plug-in:
    • Akana API Platform Repository Plug-in (installation includes the Akana Lifecycle Repository feature)
  2. After installation, check for database-specific requirements for this feature, and complete those steps as needed. See Checking for database-specific requirements.
  3. In the Community Manager developer portal user interface, enable the Extended Properties add-on feature (Admin > Settings > Site > Extended Properties and Workflow).

When the above steps are completed, the Extended Properties feature is installed and enabled, and the Community Manager developer portal is ready for custom properties. See Setting up custom properties below.

Setting up custom properties

Once the setup is complete, the next step is to set up the properties, if you haven't already. This requires knowledge of Lifecycle Manager. Resources:

Additional information

For more information about using the Extended Properties feature, refer to the following: