Tanasuk Technologies

One of the most common functionalities that we work on is importing from an Excel file. In one of our Sitecore sites, we had a Sheer UI application that would save different kinds of data that users can add manually through a popup dialog. This is a straightforward functionality until you start to have a lot of data that needs to be imported to the system. Assumptions To have this work in a[...]

Today our world is connected in more ways than we could have previously imagined possible, especially through the web. Anyone can access a website from their home or office, wherever they are in the world. This brings a new challenge to website owners to make their sites understandable for visitors from any location in any language. This is where the need for a multilingual website comes from in[...]

One of the things I really enjoy about working at Tanasuk Technologies is the opportunity to participate in a community of entrepreneurs. Whether it’s celebrating the beta version of a new website as we did recently with Hashdoc who shares our office space, discussing plans for a new iphone app with an innovative approach to language learning like Lango app or implementing a truly[...]

Our final value is oops! We all have ‘oops moments’ sometimes. It’s normal. Mistakes are great learning opportunities if we have the right attitude towards them. In our office we have this quote written on the wall: ‘To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.’ (Joseph Chilton Pearce). Oops moments often give us a good story to tell… [...]

I recently had the chance to dig into the Sitecore rich text field, which was really cool! One of our clients needed us to develop a way to highlight a phrase or a single word and consider the highlighted text as a help keyword, which will be on render display a tooltip for other text. In order to achieve this we had to add a new custom button to the rich text editor field. To implement this[...]

Having spent a year in Amman, Jordan, my internship at Tanasuk Technologies is almost over and it’s time to start preparing to go back home to Kenya. I have learnt so much! Thanks to Tanasuk I have had a chance to get hands on experience in how technology projects are collaborated internationally. Tanasuk uses Agile methodologies and Scrum on a daily basis. Planning meetings result in[...]

After moving to Jordan four months ago to begin working in content management and marketing for Hashdoc, a document discovery and sharing platform, I quickly realized that living in a foreign country is a constant exercise in managing the unexpected. An onslaught of surprises big and small tumble through each day like a flowing brook of challenges and opportunities, bringing intrigue and[...]

How does the Sitecore CMS Search Crawler item have more than one language version? Sitecore’s Search works through the Lucene.NET search engine. The configuration section enables you to set up specific configurations, for example, Targeted Database, Analyzer Engine and Index Folder. This is very helpful but there are two problems: 1. You set up a specific analyzer for a specific[...]

It seems appropriate to talk about our value of giving when Christmas is only a day away. As I think about what Christmas is really about I am reminded that it is also an invitation to be generous to those around us. At Tanasuk this means that it is more important to us to make our colleagues look good than ourselves. At our daily 9.30 meetings, we always discuss one of our values. When we[...]

What is Glass Sitecore Mapper? Glass Sitecore Mapper is an open source framework allowing you to have an object mapping framework for mapping Sitecore items directly onto an object model allowing you to model your entire Sitecore solution as a data model. The framework handles converting data to and from fields and pulling data from related items. With Glass Sitecore Mapper you can spend your[...]

Great things are possible when people come together. Our work at Tanasuk demonstrates this. We have great people and they are accomplishing great things together. Our performance is greatly influenced and determined by how we work together, solve problems together, and create new solutions together. We are creating experiences together that are fulfilling both personally and professionally, both[...]

Another important value we have at Tanasuk is that we are sharers. This means that we share our knowledge and experience with each other. Anyone who has brothers or sisters will have learnt about sharing from very early on. Siblings have a way of making you realize that the world does not revolve around you! I have a twin sister and when we were younger we had endless arguments over clothes[...]

Imagine this scenario, you’ve been told to write an application for a small rentals shop. This shop rents Books and DVDs for customers online. At the moment it only has books and DVDs but may decide to expand to other items, such as magazines and video games. The app should be able to have: 1       An index of “Rentable” Items. [...]

Let’s face it; solving businesses needs is not always simple. It’s often necessary to implement more lines of code in order to work out specific issues. This is always possible in Sitecore. For one of our recent projects we had to remove the “insert from template” option for a site in a multi-micro site environment. There are many ways of doing this. Some ways would[...]

Recently I wanted to implement a “Network Load Balancer”.  This being my first time at implementing such thing I wanted to write about it in a simple and descriptive way. NLB is a distributed algorithm to load balance network traffic across a number of hosts, helping to enhance the scalability and availability of mission critical, IP based services, such[...]

Today, I want to write about how we value the fact that we are learners here at Tanasuk. This means that we are constantly learning new things and developing our existing skills, and it's one of our core company values. As a Brit living in Jordan, I feel as though I learn new things every day! Probably the most challenging skill I’m[...]

Recently I’ve been re-designing a website which has made me think about the pros and cons of reusing design elements from another project. Before looking at the good and the bad of reshaping an existing design it’s important to think about your target market. What are your client’s business goals and what are they trying to achieve through their website? Obviously each project[...]

Introduction Sitecore Cloning items is a new feature in version 6.4. It gives the ability to reuse the same item Content in various places on the site. The Clone item is an actual item that points to another item called the Origin item, and holds the same field's data as the Origin.  This document provides more information on this topic. The Problem  Creating a new[...]

At Tanasuk we talk a lot about our values as a company; how we work together and the priorities we have. Over the next few weeks I’m going to blog about our 5 specific values that define our approach to everything we do. Our first value is that we are performers. We work hard to be the best at what we do. I started to learn the violin when I was 5 years old. Playing a musical[...]

Today I’m going to talk about a really cool feature that gives you the edge as a Sitecore developer in a competitive market, where being professional is very important. I’m going to write about how to implement Sitecore Desktop Applications. When I started to work in Sitecore CMS, I was intrigued about how to implement a custom application in the Desktop view of Sitecore. When I[...]

Layouts are written to match a functional purpose as well as a design holder; in other words, a website is made up of three components: Content, widgets (controls) and design. The layout is where all these elements come together, content placeholders and controls should be placed within the layout and things will be dynamic and changing all the time. Ok so that is a really optimistic[...]

Recently I have been working on a project that has presented me with a new and interesting challenge. It hasn't been easy but I knew I had seen the feature I was dealing with somewhere before. I found the website and did some research to work out how they applied it. I tried to do the same thing on my computer but it didn't work. I then tried to debug it and was able to find where the issue[...]

Over the past year we have been customizing our [Sitecore] Digital Marketing Suite for our internal use. What we’ve been able to do blew us away.At one of the more basic levels, we were able to create detailed personas that reflect who our website was designed for. Not only did we identify their job titles and key responsibilities, but also personal interests, hobbies, family and a typical day[...]

When I was customizing the Tanasuk website using the Sitecore E-Mail Campaign Manager, I found myself needing more information beyond what was given in the Sitecore 6.5 Administrator and Developer Guide. So I did a bit of digging and found this great post as well as some further research that allowed the module to receive the DSN (Delivery Status Notification) from Gmail for Analytics. Here is[...]

Last week Twitter launched versions in Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu. This is the first time that people will be able to tweet in languages written from right-to-left. As social media continues to grow it begs the question is it actually increasing our ability to communicate and connect with others? Or are we just isolating ourselves and causing confusion by avoiding face-to-face[...]

Wilfred and Anderson are Tanasuk’s new programming interns from Kenya. They’ll be contributing posts about their experience living and working in Jordan. First of all, we’re so grateful and humbled to have had this opportunity to come to Tanasuk in Jordan. It’s been a month here in Amman and it’s already starting to feel like home. We’ve become pretty[...]

Huddled up next to my fire watching the snow fall was not what I expected to be doing in Jordan. Obviously my assumption that the Middle East is always warm and sunny was slightly optimistic. It also made me think about the other assumptions I had made concerning how I would spend my time here.It has been fascinating to learn about running a business abroad and what makes Jordan in particular a[...]

As a Junior Drupal developer at Tanasuk, there are some issues that take me a bit to figure out (but that’s all part of the fun isn’t it?) Organic Groups” is a pretty big module in Drupal that allows users to create groups, like the ones in Facebook, where they can post and discuss various matters. Having moved from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7, I have come across a great amount of[...]

Last night I was watching the Oscars, of course, and it occurred to me how much teamwork goes into making a movie. You have production, editors, sound, the cast, directors and the list goes on. All of these people have to find some way to come together and work seamlessly to create a visual masterpiece.Along those lines, the other week we had everyone at Tanasuk complete a questionnaire to[...]

It is safe to say that English is the lingua-franca of the business world. Globally there are 380 million native English speakers and 80% of the information stored on our computers is in English.Does this mean a native English speaker can run a business abroad without making any effort to study the language and culture of the country they are in? Can those of us who count English as our mother[...]

The days when successful start-ups only came from Europe and the US are long gone. Entrepreneurs all over the world are launching game-changing businesses and organizations. They have high aspirations and ready to compete on the global stage. In the past, the educated and successful from emerging economies would leave their own countries to pursue opportunities abroad that were not[...]

Say we're cooking up a web start-up, first we need the following ingredients: Great Minds, Development Resources, Access to Capital, and a stellar Management team. Amman has all of the above but with some extras. The first extra is the sheer number of great developers. When I place a job ad here in Amman, I always get more than 100 applications (in one case it was close to 500). This is[...]

I recently attended the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Istanbul. While enjoyable on many fronts, what I was most struck by is the great equalizing taking place in the global technology/start-up scene and how I feel other industries will start to follow. Joe Biden, in his keynote address at the forum, rightly declared, "The next Steve Jobs could be a Turk or possibly come from the UAE." [...]

The borders, walls, and silos of the world are quickly disappearing in favor of connected, “flat” global markets. This is incredibly apparent in the software services sector. Recently, we worked on a project where the client was in Geneva, the project consultant in California, the graphic designer in Mexico, the project manager in the UK, and the development team in Amman. What made this[...]

I really enjoy management parables.  I feel like stories are a powerful way to communicate truth.  This is a story of failed leadership. Most mornings I go for an early morning jog in my neighborhood on the outskirts of Amman.  I'm a little overweight so I try to go really early while the streets are still empty.  On a recent morning, a large bus pulled into my neighborhood[...]

First some admissions: I am a total Apple fanboy.  I love my MacBook Pro and I love my iPhone 3G.  If you have spent any time around me, I've tried to convince you to buy one of these two products.  Depite my love of Apple,  I have yet to jump onto the iPhone application development band wagon.  As a company lately, we've been considering getting into the mobile development market and[...]