Assembling your first graph

Before you start

You need three things: a content type to describe, the block that matches it, and a shared record for the facts that are the same on every page. For Sirius, that is the Article page template, the Article block, and the Organization Mini shared record that holds the company's name, logo and address. Both the block and the record come ready to use, so the first graph needs no set-up.

1. Create the graph

Go to Graphs and choose New graph. Give it a name people will recognise, such as Article Graph, and a one-line description of what it publishes. The name is for your team. It never appears on the page.

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2. Add the block

Under Add a block to this graph, search the library for Article and add it. The block brings its properties with it: @id, headline, datePublished, image, author, publisher and the rest. The ones Google requires for an article rich result are marked, so you can see what must have a value before you publish.

Add a second block only if the page needs it. Most content types need one, plus a shared record or two.

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3. Give every property a source

Select the block under Select a block to edit its values, and work down the list. Each property gets one of four sources.

• Page field. The value changes from page to page, so point it at a field on the page template. headline comes from the Title field, image from the Main image field, author from the Author field.
• Shared record. The value is the same everywhere. Point publisher at the Organization Mini record, and every article names the same publisher.
• Automatic. Some values come from the page itself. datePublished, inLanguage and the @id are set for you.
• Fixed text. Typed once, for the rare value that never changes and belongs to this graph alone.

A property with no source shows VALUE NEEDED. Leave an optional one empty if you like, and the app leaves it out of the JSON-LD rather than publish a blank. A required one must be filled before the graph is valid.

::: tip One mapping, every page You map headline to the Title field once. Every article page then supplies its own title. That is the whole point of a graph: the mapping is done once, and the pages do the rest. :::

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4. Check the preview

Open Preview, pick a real article page, and read the JSON-LD the app will publish for it. This is the exact output, not a sample. If a required value is missing, the preview says so. From the same screen you can send the result to the Google Rich Results Test.

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5. Bind it to a page design

Under Bound to page designs, choose the page design your article pages use. The graph becomes a partial design in Sitecore and sits in that page design. One graph can serve several page designs, as long as they share the mapped fields.

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6. Save and publish

Save the graph, then publish the pages the way you always do. Every page built on that page design now carries the JSON-LD in the head of its HTML, rendered by Sitecore at publish time. View the source of any article page to see it.

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What you have now

One graph, mapped once, publishing correct Article markup on every article page, with the publisher joined to the organisation by a stable @id. The next graph is quicker, because the shared record and the habits are already there. See Binding a property to a page field for the detail on step 3.