Setting 'paste as text' as default per user via core service

Question

I have a need to set a specific users content editing parameters, specifically I need to set "paste as text" as a default for some users. I have been unable to parse out what needs to be done from the AppData. Looking for any help or direction. I need to be able to control this through the Core Service, not the GUI.

Answer 1

I was able to do this through CoreService with the following code:

ApplicationData[] arrayAd = new ApplicationData[client.ReadAllApplicationData(userElement.Attribute("ID").Value).Count()];
arrayAd = client.ReadAllApplicationData(userElement.Attribute("ID").Value);

    foreach (ApplicationData ad in arrayAd)
    {
        if (ad.ApplicationId.Equals("cme:UserPreferences"))
        {
            apData = System.Text.Encoding.Unicode.GetString(ad.Data);

            //<DefaultSpecialPasteOption>1</DefaultSpecialPasteOption>
            if (apData.Contains("DefaultSpecialPasteOption"))
                apData = Regex.Replace(apData, "<DefaultSpecialPasteOption>.</DefaultSpecialPasteOption>", "<DefaultSpecialPasteOption>4</DefaultSpecialPasteOption>");
            else
                apData += "<DefaultSpecialPasteOption>4</DefaultSpecialPasteOption>";

            ad.Data = System.Text.Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(apData);

            hasPreference = true;

            break;
        }
    }

    if (!hasPreference)
        userInfo.Append(userElement.Attribute("Title").Value + " does not have UserPreferences\n");

    client.SaveApplicationData(userElement.Attribute("ID").Value, arrayAd);

This allowed me to set the user default paste option in their cme:UserPreferences. This assumes that they have logged into the system before to set at least their language and search result count.

Now that we have updated all existing users...we will apply this to an event system on new user creation...or try to find the config that sets the default and update it.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

What you're asking for, i.e. to control a dropdown default value in the Rich Text Toolbar via the Core Service, is not possible. This is something you need to accomplish via the Anguilla API in a GUI Extension.

However, as per Nuno's comment, you should just be able to update the individual user's preference in the Dashboard:

Answer 3

According to the 2011SP1 core service API documentation this property is not exposed through the API (most likely because it is implemented as a GUI customization only) even though language ID and locale ID are.

Your only hope of automating this setting without using the GUI is to capture the difference between a user with this set and a user without and reverse engineer a solution BUT this will not be a supported way of working with the product as you're coding against a non-public and undocumented API...