====== Coupling PMA.control and PMA.slidebox ======

[[https://www.pathomation.com/pma.control|PMA.control]] is Pathomation's [[https://realdata.pathomation.com/a-look-at-pma-control/|flagship product for high-end training]]. It is used for mostly professional education. But what do you do when your physicians go home after the weekend seminar?

In a number of scenarios it is convenient to have content available for a limited time after the event. Setting up collections in PMA.slidebox is easy enough, but inconvenient if you've already curated your content in PMA.control. In PMA.control, case collections are virtual; the slides don't have to move to a particular location, as they do in for PMA.slidebox (the latter is a design decision; the same concept also makes it easy to organize your slides and cases in the first place). 

For people that already have content in PMA.control, therefore, and just want to host their content on a broader basis, we allow PMA.slidebox to directly connect to PMA.control.

{{ :pma_control_and_pma_slidebox.png?400 |}}

In PMA.slidebox, you can opt to connect to a PMA.control instance instead of a PMA.core instance:

{{ :pma_control_and_pma_slidebox_3.png?400 |}}

Save your connection info, and when you switch to the collection configuration panel, you can now choose from any number pre-defined case collection from PMA.control:

{{ :pma_control_and_pma_slidebox_10.png?400 |}}

You can verify that you see the same data in PMA.slidebox by simultaneously consulting your PMA.control administration interface.

{{ :pma_control_and_pma_slidebox_20.png?400 |}}

The end-result is the same: a website organized with slide collections and cases.

It's the same hierarchy that you see represented in the case collection details on the PMA.control end.

{{ :pma_control_and_pma_slidebox_30.png?400 |}}

Changes in the meta-data of a case collection in PMA.control are immmediate: make some changes in PMA.control, and the content is immediately updated in PMA.slidebox as well.

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By the way, even if you have PMA.control, you can still connect to the underlying PMA.core directly and point to folder that represent your content, rather than the curated content from PMA.control. 

{{ :pma_control_and_pma_slidebox_2.png?400 |}}

When you go this route, however, you loose access to the curated data in PMA.control. At the same time, you regain some freedom by pointing to folders directly, without having to define any structure in PMA.control first.