Rearranging a data template

When you create a data template from a Message you replicate the Message structure. This might be OK in some cases, but there are cases when the Message structure is not suitable for presentation. In such cases you can rearrange the data template by, for example, moving, adding and removing nodes.

Removing nodes

If you only want to handle parts of the Message data in a StoryTeller configuration you do not need all the nodes in the auto generated data template. In such a case you can remove all redundant nodes.

Moving nodes

You can move nodes in a data template. Note though that you must be careful if you move a node and make it a sub-node of another node. If you do this you cannot define a transformation rule matching the text value of the parent node.

Adding new nodes

You can add new nodes to a data template. These new nodes can be standard elements (Custom node), attributes or interactive objects.

One example of when it can be beneficial to add new nodes is when the Message data includes fields that contain several presentation values (values in StoryTeller output). In this case you can create a new node for each presentation value, and then define the appropriate data transformation rule for each new node.