General Views, is a feature available in Enterprise and Radio Network plans on all our solutions. Please note that specifically for News - RSS Full Pack, General Views is available on all 3 plans, Starter, Business & Enterprise. 

General Views enables you to create items (e.g. news articles, products, events etc.), optionally group them into categories and assign them to your mobile menu. Moreover, items grouped in categories can be displayed in 3 different views within your mobile app(s):

In case you want to categorise general views items into groups you need to create categories. Note that there is no limit to the depth of category levels; therefore you can create as many categories or subcategories as you want and assign as many items as you want into each one.

In the Categories tab, an overview of all general views categories is available. You can easily publish or unpublish them, rearrange their order using "drag & drop", copy, delete, edit or create new ones.

Once within a General Views category, you can edit its name and alias (make sure each one is unique), publish or unpublish it, assign it to others or set it as root (parent category).

What is more, you can set a teaser image, up to 8 MB, for each category and set its dimensions. We recommend against setting pictures with big dimensions as teasers since the loading speed of your mobile app might be affected. What is more, the predefined teaser images dimensions cannot be surpassed no matter how big is the image you upload. Last but not least you need to make sure not to include any spaces or special characters to your image names.

Once categories are created you can assign general views items to them.

In the Items tab, an overview of all items is available. You can easily publish or unpublish them, rearrange their display order using the Order Priority column (the bigger the order display number the latter they will be displayed in your mobile app), copy, delete, edit or create new ones.

Each General Views item has its own title, short & long description, alias (make sure each one is unique), image and can be assigned to one or multiple categories. Text editors are equipped with numerous tools allowing you to create compelling and rich content. What is more, you can switch to HTML editor at any time, in order to insert custom code. In case you have added extra languages to your plan, you can specify values for each one.

Moreover, Forms (custom or premade), Media Galleries, Authors, related items and a Google Maps location can be assigned to each general views item. In case the item is describing, for example, an event or a concert, specific dates and hours can be set. 

Lastly, you can add an unlimited number of URLs, email addresses & phone numbers and rearrange their order according to your liking. Mobile app users will have the ability to directly contact you, therefore, make sure you include a country code and provide a valid email address.

Looksomething utilises the Disqus comment platform on all its mobile apps. Disqus is a worldwide comment hosting service that helps power online discussions and increases engagement.

Visiting each item individually you can turn comments on or off. You can connect your Disqus account to your mobile apps by visiting Settings from where you may also activate or deactivate comments for all the general views items.

Push notification

If Mobile Push Notification Addon is active in your plan you can send this specific item as push notification message to your app users leading them directly to it. Title, short description and the item's image will be used in the notification message. As soon as you are done editing simply press Save and Send Push.

Slider URL

Each General Views Item can be assigned to your slider (by visiting Settings).
In case Slider URL is left blank then users tapping on a slider's item will be redirected to that item. However, if a URL is set here, then users will be redirected to this one instead. Make sure you type http:// or https:// at the beginning of the URL.

Each General Views category, except being displayed as a catalogue (list) of various items may also be displayed in Calendar or Map view. This selection may be made by visiting Mobile Menu and is thoroughly explained in the relevant video tutorial.

You need to make sure that items displayed in Calendar view have a date & time while those displayed in Map view have a Google Maps location assigned to them.

The following video tutorial demonstrates how you can create and edit general views items and categories using your Control Panel.

Please note that some of the features and options displayed in this video might not be available or active in your plan.

If you have questions while watching, just ask us using the messenger in the lower right corner of this page and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.