Onboarding is a critical part of the merchant's user experience. It helps set them up for success and ensures they're not only using your extension correctly but also getting the most out of it. There are a few especially useful features that you can take advantage of as a developer to help onboard merchants who are using your extension:
Setup tasks appear on the WooCommerce Admin home screen and prompt a merchant to complete certain steps in order to set up your extension. Adding tasks is a two-step process that requires:
- Registering the task (and its JavaScript) using PHP
- Using JavaScript to build the task, set its configuration, and add it to the task list
To register your task as an extended task list item, you'll need to hook in to the `woocommerce_get_registered_extended_tasks` filter with a function that appends your task to the array the filter provides.
In addition to registering the task name, you'll also need to register and enqueue the transpiled JavaScript file containing your task component, its configuration, and its event-handlers. A common way to do this is to create a dedicated registration function that hooks into the `admin_enqueue_scripts` action in WordPress. If you do things this way, you can nest the `add_filter` call for `woocommerce_get_registered_extended_tasks` in this function as well. Below is an annotated example of how this registration might look:
Once the task has been registered in WooCommerce, you need to build the task component, set its configuration, and add it to the task list. For example, the JavaScript file for a simple task might look something like this:
```js
// External dependencies.
import { addFilter } from '@wordpress/hooks';
import apiFetch from '@wordpress/api-fetch';
import { Card, CardBody } from '@wordpress/components';
// WooCommerce dependencies.
import { getHistory, getNewPath } from '@woocommerce/navigation';
// Event handler for handling mouse clicks that mark a task complete.
const markTaskComplete = () => {
// Here we're using apiFetch to set option values in WooCommerce.
First, import any functions, components, or other utilities from external dependencies. We've kept WooCommerce-related dependencies separate from others for the sake of keeping things tidy. In a real-world extension, you may be importing other local modules. In those cases, we recommend creating a visually separate section for those imports as well.
The `addFilter` function allows us to hook in to JavaScript filters the same way that the traditional PHP call to `add_filter()` does. The `apiFetch` utility allows our extension to query the WordPress REST API without needing to deal with keys or authentication. Finally, the `Card` and `CardBody` are predefined React components that we'll use as building blocks for our extension's Task component.
Next we define the logic for the functions that will handle events for our task. In the example above, we created two functions to handle mouse clicks that toggle the completion status of our task.
In the example above, the event handler uses `apiFetch` to set the `woocommerce_admin_add_task_example_complete` option's value to `true` and then updates the component's state data and redirects the browser to the Admin root. In the case of an error, we're simply logging it to the console, but you may want to implement your own solution here.
The `markTaskIncomplete` function is more or less an inverse of `markTaskComplete` that toggles the task's completion status in the opposite direction.
Next, we create a [functional component](https://reactjs.org/docs/components-and-props.html) that returns our task card. The intermixed JavaScript/HTML syntax we're using here is called JSX. If you're unfamiliar with it, you can [read more about it in the React docs](https://reactjs.org/docs/introducing-jsx.html).
In the example above, we're using the `Card` and `CardBody` components to construct our task's component. The `div` inside the `CardBody` uses a [JavaScript expression](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guide/Expressions_and_Operators#Expressions) (`{}`) to embed a ternary operator that uses the component's state to determine whether to display the task as complete or incomplete.
Finally, we'll set some configuration values for our task and then use the `addFilter` function to append our task to the WooCommerce Admin Onboarding Task List.
In the example above, we're setting our task's configuration as we pass it into the filter for simplicity, but in a real-world extension, you might encapsulate this somewhere else for better separation of concerns. Below is a list of properties that the task-list component supports for tasks.
| type | String | Yes | Type of task list item, setup items will be in the store setup and extension in the extensions setup |
---
## Using Store Management Links
When a merchant completes all of the items on the onboarding task list, WooCommerce replaces it with a section containing a list of handy store management links. Discoverability can be a challenge for extensions, so this section is a great way to bring more attention to key features of your extension and help merchants navigate to them.
The store management section has a relatively narrow purpose, so this section does not currently support external links. Instead, it is meant for navigating quickly within WooCommerce.
Adding your own store management links is a simple process that involves:
- Installing dependencies for icon support
- Enqueuing an admin script in your PHP
- Hooking in via a JavaScript filter to provide your link object
Store management links use the `@wordpress/icons` package. If your extension isn't already using it, you'll need to add it to your extension's list of dependencies.
The logic that adds your custom link to the store management section will live in a JavaScript file. We'll register and enqueue that file with WordPress in our PHP file:
The first argument of this call is a handle, the name by which WordPress will refer to the script we're enqueuing. The second argument is the URL where the script is located.
The third argument is an array of script dependencies. By supplying the `wp-hooks` handle in that array, we're ensuring that our script will have access to the `addFilter` function we'll be using to add our link to WooCommerce's list.
The fourth argument is a priority, which determines the order in which JavaScripts are loaded in WordPress. We're setting a priority of 10 in our example. It's important that your script runs before the store management section is rendered. With that in mind, make sure your priority value is lower than 15 to ensure your link is rendered properly.
Finally, in the JavaScript file you enqueued above, hook in to the `woocommerce_admin_homescreen_quicklinks` filter and supply your task as a simple JavaScript object.
Admin Notes are meant for displaying insightful information about your WooCommerce store, extensions, activity, and achievements. They're also useful for displaying information that can help with the day-to-day tasks of managing and optimizing a store. A good general rule is to use Admin Notes for information that is:
With that in mind, you might consider using Admin Notes to celebrate a particular milestone that a merchant has passed, or to provide additional guidance about using a specific feature or flow. Conversely, you shouldn't use Admin Notes to send repeated messages about the same topic or target all users with a note that is only relevant to a subset of merchants. It's okay to use Admin Notes for specific promotions, but you shouldn't abuse the system. Use your best judgement and remember the home screen is meant to highlight a store's most important actionable tasks.
Despite being a part of the new React-powered admin experience in WooCommerce, Admin Notes are available to developers via a standard PHP interface.
The recommended approach for using Admin Notes is to encapsulate your note within its own class that uses the [NoteTraits](https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce-admin/blob/831c9ff13a862f22cf53d3ae676daeabbefe90ad/src/Notes/NoteTraits.php) trait included with WooCommerce Admin. Below is a simple example of what this might look like:
```php
<?php
/**
* Simple note provider
*
* Adds a note with a timestamp showing when the note was added.
First, we're doing some basic namespacing and feature availability checks, along with a safeguard to make sure this file only executes within the WordPress application space.
Next, we define a simple class that will serve as a note provider for our note. To create and manage note objects, we'll import the `Note` and `NotesTraits` classes from WooCommerce Admin.
Before proceeding, create a constant called `NOTE_NAME` and assign a unique note name to it. The `NoteTraits` class uses this constant for queries and note operations.
Once you've set your note's name, you can define and configure your note. The `NoteTraits` class will call `self::get_note()` when performing operations, so you should encapsulate your note's instantiation and configuration in a static function called `get_note()` that returns a `Note` object.
Inside our `get_note()` function, we'll handle any logic for collecting data our Note may need to display. Our example note will include information about when the extension was activated, so this bit of code is just for demonstration. You might include other logic here depending on what data your note should contain.
'Extension activated on %s.', $activated_time_formatted
)
);
```
In addition to regular content, notes also support structured content using the `content_data` property. You can use this property to re-localize notes on the fly, but that is just one use case. You can store other data here too. This is backed by a `longtext` column in the database.
Next, we'll set the note's `type` property. Note types are defined as enum-style class constants in the `Note` class. Available note types are _error_, _warning_, _update_, _info_, and _marketing_. When selecting a note type, be aware that the _error_ and _update_ result in the note being shown as a Store Alert, not in the Inbox. It's best to avoid using these types of notes unless you absolutely need to.
Admin Notes also support a few different layouts. You can specify `banner`, `plain`, or `thumbnail` as the layout. If you're interested in seeing the different layouts in action, take a look at [this simple plugin](https://gist.github.com/octaedro/864315edaf9c6a2a6de71d297be1ed88) that you can install to experiment with them.
If you have an image that you want to add to your Admin Note, you can specify it using the `set_image` function. This property ultimately renders as the `src` attribute on an `img` tag, so use a string here.
Next, we'll set the values for our Admin Note's `name` and `source` properties. As a best practice, you should store your extension's name (i.e. its slug) in the `source` property of the note. You can use the `name` property to support multiple sub-types of notes. This gives you a handy way of namespacing your notes and managing them at both a high and low level.
Admin Notes can support 0, 1, or 2 actions (buttons). You can use these actions to capture events that trigger asynchronous processes or help the merchant navigate to a particular view to complete a step, or even simply to provide an external link for further information. The `add_action()` function takes up to three arguments. The first is the action name, which can be used for event handling, the second renders as a label for the action's button, and the third is an optional URL for actions that require navigation.
Finally, remember to have the `get_note()` function return the configured Note object.
`return $note;`
#### Adding and deleting notes
To add and delete notes, you can use the helper functions that are part of the `NoteTraits` class: `possibly_add_note()` and its counterpart `possibly_delete_note()`. These functions will handle some of the repetitive logic related to note management and will also run checks to help you avoid creating duplicate notes.
Our example extension ties these calls to activation and deactivation hooks for the sake of simplicity. While there are many events for which you may want to add Notes to a merchant's inbox, deleting notes upon deactivation and uninstallation is an important part of managing your extension's lifecycle.
