When working on content with Scrivito, you actually alter pages and the widgets and properties they have. All editorial work is done using working copies which finally get published.
Published Content & Working Copies
Published Content & Working Copies
A working copy is a copy of the published CMS content. To this copy, editorial changes can be made without affecting the published content or the content in other working copies. Working copies are also convenient for testing new page types or their properties, for example, because you can simply delete them if ’re not needed any more.
Working copies are meant to ease editorial work on a particular subject or on particular website areas or structures. If several persons work on the same task, they might want to use the same working copy to accomplish this task. Individual editors can use working copies for their individual purposes, too.
Provided that you are permitted to do so, you can create a working copy, select a different one, or, for example, rename the currently selected one using the working copy menu on the sidebar. See below for detailed descriptions of the menu items.
The published content as well as all working copies are indexed on the fly, meaning that search results automatically reflect even the most recent changes to the content.
Working Copy Menu Items
This creates a working copy. New working copies are based on the published content. The pieces of content you haven’t touched in the new working copy are automatically updated as the published content changes.
This replaces the currently published content with your working copy. After this, create a new working copy if you wish to continue editing. Alternatively, if the editorial cycle is guided by workflows, a “Request publish” button may show up here.
The changes view (see below for further details) displays the list of pages, images, etc. that were created, deleted, or edited in the currently selected working copy. Additionally, this view helps you to identify concurrent changes to content, i.e. content that was also modified in a different working copy that has been published in the meantime.
The collaborators dialog lets you specify the working copy’s collaborators if you are permitted to do so. Additional users, next to the one who created the working copy, may view or change content or publish the working copy, depending on their permissions.
You can rename a working copy whenever you wish. Just keep in mind that other editors may have your working copy in their list, too, so choosing a proper name is a good idea.
This button becomes visible if your mouse pointer hovers over any working copy in the sidebar (except the published content). If you delete a working copy, you will later not be able to restore any of the changes that were made in it.
Automatically updated working copies
While you are working on one or the other web page, your workmates publish their working copies in parallel. This causes yours as well as other working copies to be automatically updated, meaning that changes published intermediately are instantly reflected in all working copies.
If, for example, Jane as well as Tim have been reworking the “About us” page of your site, at different places of the page, and Jane then publishes her working copy, Tim will recognize this, but his changes aren’t affected.
However, if both Jane and Tim changed the same piece of text or the same image, etc., Tim’s changes cause a conflict after Jane has published hers because his changes are no longer based on the version he started off with. Tim needs to synchronize his version with the version most-recently-published (by Jane) to be able to publish his working copy.
Getting an overview of changed content
You can have Scrivito display a list of all CMS objects that have been changed in a working copy.
[New in 1.21.0]For browsing changed content, it is most convenient and efficient to use the changes panel on the sidebar because it lets you step through the pages and inspect them individually without having to open the changes dialog for each of them.
The changes dialog can be accessed through the “Working Copies” sidebar. The dialog includes a few more details than the sidebar panel, and also lets you move changes to a different working copy.
Clicking a page in this list opens it, whereas clicking a list item referring to any other kind of content (e.g. an image), opens its properties dialog.
The icons on the left hand side of the changes list indicate the kind of change that has been applied to the CMS objects: new, altered, or deleted. Items that have been changed but published concurrently using a different working copy are grayed out. Such editing conflicts need to be resolved to be able to publish the working copy.
If you wish to publish just a selection of specific CMS objects in advance, independently of the other changed objects in the working copy, you can move those changes to a different working copy.