Welcome to v5.0

Overview

Forrit CMS v5.0 and subsequent 5.x releases are focused on centralised content management, multi-channel publishing, improved editorial workflows, and robust performance and security enhancements.

Forrit CMS Feature & Capability Guide by Role

Forrit CMS is a composable content platform: content is modelled once, assembled into pages from reusable components, and published to any channel - Web (HTML), Headless (JSON), mobile, and in-store. This guide is a complete breakdown of what the platform offers, organised around the four roles that use it day to day, so each audience can see everything available to them in one place.

• Content Editors & Authors - create and publish everyday content.

• Developers & Implementers - build content models, templates, and integrations.

• Site Administrators - manage users, permissions, releases, and governance.

• Marketers & Business Users - run campaigns, personalisation, and multi-market content.

Most capabilities are used by more than one role. Where that overlap matters, it's called out explicitly.

Capability areas at a glance

Content Editors & Authors

Content creation & organisation

• Content library - every content entry and media asset lives in a single, reusable library rather than being locked to one page, so the same piece of content can be reused across multiple pages or channels (Web or JSON).

• Linked content entries - entries can reference other entries (a single link or a collection of links), letting you build structured, connected content such as an article linked to its author and related articles.

• Rich field types - content types can include rich text, images and other media, dates and times, numbers, toggles, pick-lists, and links to other content - covering all modelling needs without custom development.

• Content relationship visualisation - see how entries reference and depend on one another before making a change, so you understand the impact of edits or deletions.

• Auto-named private entries - private, non-public-facing entries can generate their internal name automatically from their content type, so you don't need to invent a name for content nobody but the CMS will see.

Page building

• Drag-and-drop page editor - pages are assembled from reusable components placed into layout sections, rather than built as one-off designs each time.

• Page folders & page tree - organise pages into a hierarchical folder structure that mirrors how your site or app is structured.

• Page cloning - duplicate an existing page, either its layout only or its layout and content together, to speed up building similar pages.

• Quick-edit linked content - open and edit the content entry behind a page component directly from the page layout, without navigating to a separate screen.

• Locale- and variant-specific visibility - hide individual components on a page for specific languages or personalisation variants, without removing them from the underlying layout.

• Preview with placeholders - preview a page's layout with placeholder text standing in for any content that hasn't been assigned yet.

Everyday editing experience

• Required fields - key fields can be marked mandatory (including per language), so incomplete content is caught before it reaches review rather than after.

• Predictable editing controls - field-type indicators sit alongside field names, action controls stay in a consistent position, and clicking a field focuses it immediately for typing.

• Save & Preview / Save & Continue - save and jump straight into preview in one action, or save and continue working without a separate navigation step.

• Clear validation feedback - fields with errors or unmet validation are visually highlighted so issues are easy to spot and fix.

Review, approval & translation

• Tasks - every change is made inside its own isolated working task, keeping it separate from live, approved content until it's reviewed and merged.

• Task Review - submit a branch for review and get a summary of what changed, an assessment of its impact, and a field-by-field diff for reviewers to check before approving.

• Translation jobs - create, mark ready, send, and receive translation jobs for entries and fields flagged as translatable, keeping multilingual content in sync with source content.

• Audit history - every change to content is recorded automatically, so you can see who changed what and when.

Developers & Implementers

Projects & multi-site setup

• Multi-project architecture - a single CMS instance can host multiple independent projects (websites API’s or apps, each delivered to its own top-level URL), so implementers can stand up and configure new properties without provisioning a separate CMS.

• Per-project isolation - each project has its own storage, database, and search index, so schema, content, and configuration changes in one project never touch another.

• Project-scoped API access - every API call, webhook, and permission is scoped to a specific project, which is a first-class parameter throughout the platform.

Content modelling

• Content type builder - define custom content schemas using typed fields (string, rich text, boolean, integer, decimal, date, date-time, time, media, pick-list, and single or collection links to other content types).

• Field defaults, hints & validation - set default values (including per-locale defaults), contextual hints, and per-locale required-field rules directly on the schema.

• Private and public content types - mark a content type (and everything created from it) as private when it should never be linked externally or surfaced outside its parent, with a client-wide default for new types and entries so this doesn't need to be chosen every time.

• Components - build reusable channel(Web or JSON) aware components that bind to a content type and can be dropped into page layouts, forming the bridge between content and presentation.

Page templates

• Page Templates - define reusable templates that standardise how a category of pages is structured, reducing repetitive manual page setup.

• Templates via API - create and configure page templates programmatically, suited to sites where pages are generated or maintained through automation.

• Typed pages via SDK - the SDK exposes page template information so consumer applications can retrieve strongly-typed page data instead of parsing raw JSON.

• JSON-driven page generation - automatic generation of page templates and page instances from JSON content, aimed at further reducing manual page creation on API-driven sites.

Routing, channels & delivery

• Routing - configure how request URLs resolve, including direct rewrites and permanent or temporary redirects, plus dedicated routes for media items and external URLs (including routes scoped to a specific consumer application).

• Multi-channel publishing - a single content source can publish to multiple channels — traditional web/HTML pages and headless/JSON endpoints for mobile apps, in-store devices, and other consumers — each channel defining its own layout sections and output format.

• Channel-aware content delivery - the API filters content correctly by channel, so a request for an HTML page can't accidentally receive JSON-only content and vice versa.

External API & SDK

• GraphQL API - query and mutate projects, branches, content types, content entries, pages, media, users, and more, for building custom front ends and integrations.

• Cursor-based pagination - page reliably through large result sets (for example, large content libraries) using cursor-based pagination on list queries.

• Rendered page manifests - retrieve a fully resolved page manifest for a given locale and personalisation variant, including optional component-level annotations for building accurate preview tooling.

• Scoped API tokens - generate per-user API tokens for programmatic access to a project.

Webhooks & event integrations

• Webhooks - trigger external systems on content events using a webhook with a custom GraphQL query defining exactly what data is sent, filterable by resource type (page, content entry, release, and more) and by event type (create, update, delete), with custom callback headers.

• Notification routing - webhook-driven events can notify external systems directly, or route through email, Microsoft Teams, or AI-driven workflow triggers.

MCP server & Agent Skills

• MCP server - an optional, dedicated MCP (Model Context Protocol) server exposes CMS operations - managing projects, tasks, content types, entries, and pages - to any MCP-compatible AI agent (such as GitHub Copilot, Claude, or Gemini) over HTTP. The agent authenticates with a scoped CMS API key, an audit trail is created so every AI-driven change is fully traceable.

• Agent Skills - packaged, reusable instruction sets that teach an AI agent how to carry out a specific, repeatable CMS process end-to-end (for example, "create a new blog post in our standard format") rather than relying on ad hoc prompting each time. A default skill set ships out of the box, and teams can refine it or add their own for recurring workflows.

Localisation for developers

• Translatable field flags - mark individual text and rich-text fields as translatable, controlling what's included when a translation job is generated.

• Required locales per field - specify which locales must have a value for a given field, enforced at the schema level.

Site Administrators

Projects & multi-site management

• Create and manage projects - stand up additional projects (independent websites, API’s or apps, each with its own top-level URL) within the same CMS instance, each with its own users, content, and publishing cadence.

• Move between projects - see and switch between every project you have access to from a single CMS login, without separate environments or credentials.

• Isolated project data - each project keeps its own storage, database, and search index, so multiple brands or properties can be run safely from one CMS instance.

Users, roles & permissions

• Create custom roles (RBAC) - build an unlimited number of custom roles, each from a granular set of permission scopes covering every major area of the platform (content types, entries, pages, branches, releases, users, webhooks, workflows, and more), or grant full administrative access with a single flag.

• Delegated permission roles - purpose-built roles such as Webhook Manager (create, edit, and delete webhooks and external triggers) and Page Template Manager (create, review, update, and delete page templates) let specific responsibilities be handed off without granting full admin rights.

• Directory-based user management - create CMS users from an existing Entra ID identity directory and assign one or more roles to each; Entra ID group mappings can also be used to manage permissions at the project level.

Review & governance

• Configurable approval workflows - define multi-stage workflows where each stage requires a set number of approvals before content can progress.

• Task Review - every submitted change is reviewed through a summary, an impact assessment, and a field-level diff, with required-field validation enforced automatically before a task can be completed.

• Data-integrity safeguards - the platform protects against orphaned content - for example, ensuring a linked content type isn't incorrectly flagged as deleted after being removed and re-added, and preventing nested private entries or translation jobs from being left behind when related items are deleted.

• Audit history & export — a complete, exportable history of content changes supports compliance reviews and internal reporting.

• Four-eyes check - an approver can never sign off on their own content, so every change needs a second set of eyes before it goes live.

Releases, locales & platform

• Releases - package the state of a task into a release and deploy it to one or more connected consumer applications.

• Locale management - add and manage locales with parent-child inheritance, so a new or partially translated locale can fall back sensibly to its parent language.

• Reliable routing management - search and manage the full set of configured routes with accurate, up-to-date results.

• Platform reliability by default - content is served through a globally consolidated caching layer, on a modern containerised deployment architecture with private networking enabled by default - giving administrators a secure, cost-efficient foundation with no extra configuration required.

Marketers & Business Users

Personalisation & targeting

• Context variants - create alternate versions of a page or component for different audiences or experiences, and control precisely which locales or variants see which content.

Multi-market & multi-channel reach

• Multi-channel publishing - the same underlying content can power a website and headless endpoints (API’s, mobile apps, in-store devices, and more) from a single source, keeping campaign content consistent everywhere it appears.

• Localisation & translation - manage content across languages using locale inheritance (so unfinished translations fall back to a parent language) and translation jobs to coordinate in-house or outsourced translation work.

• Campaign-friendly routing - configure redirects and external URL routes to manage vanity URLs and campaign links without engineering involvement for every change.

Content operations & reporting

• Central content library - campaign content and media are reusable across pages and channels rather than duplicated for each placement.

• Configurable content visibility defaults - set sensible public/private defaults for new content, reducing manual decisions during content creation.

• Audit trail - a full, exportable history of content changes supports marketing operations reporting and governance needs.

• Integration notifications - key content events can notify marketing tools and channels (including email and Microsoft Teams) via webhooks, keeping teams informed without manual check-ins.

Integrations & Add-ons

Beyond the core platform, Forrit CMS connects to a set of add-on services and third-party tools that extend what content teams and their sites can do.

AI-powered add-ons

• Automatic media tagging — AI-powered image recognition generates descriptive tags for media as it's uploaded, making the media library faster to search and organise.

• Instant machine translation — translate text instantly or in batch across 100+ languages as a fast first pass ahead of human review, complementing the core Translation Manager workflow.

• AI-driven search — content and asset search within the CMS is powered by AI to surface more relevant results.

Digital asset management & content intelligence

• Aprimo DAM & Content Personalisation — connects to Aprimo's Digital Asset Management and Content Personalisation platform. Assets are referenced from Aprimo (via an asset ID and URL) inside CMS content, which enables engagement tracking for specific website placements ("slots") and AI-driven recommendations for which asset — for example, a hero image — is likely to perform best.

Integration ecosystem

Pages built in Forrit CMS can embed or connect to a broad range of common third-party tools, including:

Integrations