Custom Widgets

One of the great things in Interact is the ability to configure the homepages with the library of widgets that are available.

There are two great widgets that can be utilised to create custom widgets; these are the IFrame and HTML widget. The functional opportunities for these are endless!

HTML Widget

HTML widgets provide an easy way to embed functionality from many other systems into Interact. These can range from stock tickers, world clocks, weather forecasts, Yammer timelines and many more. These systems typically produce an 'embed code' that can be copied into an HTML widget allows you to include or embed relevant functionality as part of a homepage on your intranet.

A potential hurdle for this, however, is due to assumptions that are made by third parties. These can be invalid within Interact due to how widgets are loaded. In order to provide a user experience that is as responsive and informative as possible, widgets are loaded asynchronously. This ensures that the page is visibly loading, providing the user with positive feedback and assurance that something is happening.

The side effect of this is that it can throw out the timing of JavaScript in HTML widgets a little. Embed widgets often rely on parts of the page or script, that are loaded separately, and therefore might be requested before they've completely loaded. There's a simple workaround for this which is to test for the relevant part before trying to use it. If it's not ready yet, wait a little while and try again.

IFrame Widget

The IFrame widget allows you to embed an external service via URL into a widget.