Published Content & Working Copies

Published Content & Working Copies

When working on content with Scrivito, you actually manipulate pages and the widgets and properties they have. Editorial work is always done using a working copy which the editor finally publishes.

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.

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, it is recommendable in most cases that they use the same working copy to accomplish this task. Individual editors can use working copies for their individual purposes, too.

You can create a working copy, select a different one, or perform an operation with the currently selected one using the working copy menu on the sidebar. See below for detailed descriptions of the menu items.

Working copy menu items

This creates a working copy. New working copies are based on the published content. The CMS objects you haven't touched in the new working copy are automatically updated as the published content changes.
The publishing history lets you create a working copy from previously published content for viewing or restoring all or part of this content.
This replaces the currently published content with your working copy. After this, create a new working copy if you wish to continue editing.
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 pages that were also modified in a different working copy that has been published in the meantime.
The settings dialog lets you rename the currently selected working copy or specify its users. Additional users, next to the one who created the working copy, may change content or publish the working copy, depending on their permissions.
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 might be able to restore it using the publishing history, provided that the working copy is still in your archive.

Automatically updated working copies

While you are working on one or the other page, your workmates might publish their working copies. 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.

However, this doesn't apply to pieces of content that were altered in parallel in two or more working copies. So, if Jane as well as Tim have been reworking the “About us” page of your site, and Jane publishes her working copy, Tim's changes aren't overwritten. However, this causes a conflict in Tim's version because he is now working on outdated content. Tim needs to synchronize his version with the version published to be able to publish his working copy.

Getting an overview of changed content

You can have Scrivito display the list of all CMS objects that have been changed in a working copy. For this, click the “Changes” button in the “Working copies” section of the sidebar.

Clicking a page in this list opens it, while clicking a list item referring to any other kind of content (e.g. images), displays this object's properties view. Note that in editing mode, you can alter content even if it's viewed via the changes list.

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.

Note that you can move changes to a different working copy in order to publish just a selection of specific CMS objects in advance, independently of the other objects in the working copy.