PageBuilder Editor: Publishing a Page
Once you have curated your Page and are ready to Publish it, you can switch to Publish Workspace.
Publish Workspace
As the name suggests, Publish Workspace is the PageBuilder Workspace dedicated to Publish workflows. Only users with appropriate permissions can Publish.
PageBuilder Editor offers simplified Publish Options to help you complete actions on your Draft faster.
The typical steps to Publish a Page are:
Make necessary edits in Curate Workspace
Share Edits
Publish
When you switch to the Publish Workspace by clicking on the Publish Workspace icon, you'll have the following:
The Editor Preview will display Merged Draft, the combined view of My Draft and the Shared draft so that you can see your edits in context of the Shared Draft before making any decisions.
You will have Publish Options available to you on the left.
Publish Options
There are two tabs under Publish Options: Merged Draft and My Draft.
You can easily switch between the two tabs as and when you need.
Merged Draft tab is displayed by default. These options are not available in case of merge conflicts. (Read more about Merge Conflicts below.)
Share & Publish - This is the most commonly performed Publish action. You can preview your edits along with Shared Draft in the Editor Preview on the right and Share & Publish your changes. With this single action, you can apply changes from My Draft to the Shared Draft and Publish.
Edit Merged Version - If you find the combined preview with your edits and the Shared Draft okay, you can use this option to apply changes from the Shared Draft to My Draft and continue editing the Merged Draft. You can take this action when you are not ready to Share your Edits yet but would like to get the updates from other collaborators into My Draft.
My Draft options are more advanced options if you need them. These options are available to you in the event you see merge conflicts. (Read more about Merge Conflicts below.)
Use My Draft - This option will allow you to replace the Shared Draft with My Draft in its entirety. This option is used to override the Shared Draft in certain cases where the Shared Draft has undesirable changes or if there are multiple conflicts and restoring the Shared Draft with My Draft is more desirable than conflict resolution. My Draft becomes the Shared Draft.
Publish Draft - With this option, you can Publish My Draft without applying your changes to the Shared Draft. This is useful if you want to quickly fix something critical in the Published version without going through the standard workflow of updating the Shared Draft or resolving conflicts.
Merge Conflicts
What is a Merge conflict and why do you need to resolve conflicts?
First of all, if you are the only user working on a Page, Merge conflicts and resolution are not applicable to your case.
When two or more users make edits to the same item (Feature, Chain, Global Content, Page Metadata etc.) on a given Page and one of the user shares the edits, other users will experience conflicts when trying to Share their Edits.
When multiple users work on different zones or items of a Page and share edits, PageBuilder is smart enough to combine all those changes effectively as expected often behind the scenes. The conflicts occur when changes in My Draft cannot be combined with the Shared Draft as there is a possibility of overriding previous changes made by other users. So PageBuilder presents such conflicts for you to review and make decisions - to choose between the Shared Draft or My Draft changes - instead of automatically overriding the Shared Draft.
What leads to Merge conflicts?
Conflicts generally occur when two users edit the same item or one user edits an item and another user deletes it.
Here are a few examples:
You and your colleague working on a Page make edits to the same Feature, say Header Feature and your colleague shares edits before you do, then when you click on Share Edits, you will be presented with Merge conflicts.
When you update the number of stories in Feature Configurations of a Feed Card Feature, and your colleague deletes that Feature and shares edits, you will be presented with Merge conflicts when you click on Publish Workspace.
When users add a Feature/ Chain, move a Feature/ Chain, remove a Feature/ Chain, you would not typically see conflicts.
In the event that there are conflicts (not every single time), you will be presented with the Merge conflicts Flow in one of two scenarios:
When you click on "Share Edits" - PageBuilder wants you to know that you have made edits to some items updated and shared by other users.
When you switch to the Publish Workspace - PageBuilder cannot display the combined preview in the Editor Preview because some of the items in the Shared Draft and My Draft are in conflict (e.g you may have changed the text size for a Feature custom field to be large and the Shared Draft may have it as small. In this case, PageBuilder wouldn't know which text size is right unless you make that decision.)
How to resolve conflicts?
Now that you know what conflicts are, when to expect them, and why you need to resolve them, let us talk about how to resolve them.
When you find yourself in a conflict situation, you will not be able to Share Edits or Use Shared. The Status card will indicate the number of conflicts. On the left, just below the Status card, you will have Publish Draft Options. These are the same Publish Options from "My Draft" tab from Publish Workspace. You can use these options as explained above or you can view your conflicts one-by-one from the "Draft Conflicts" card.
When you click on each conflict, a modal highlighting the changes in the Shared Draft and My Draft will be displayed. You can view these changes and select the version you want by clicking on the little circle (radio button) next to the Shared Draft or My Draft. Confirm your choice by clicking the "Resolve Conflict" button.
As a conflict is resolved, you will see a check next to it in the Draft Options card on the left.
Note
If you leave this step before completing the resolution of all the conflicts, you will have to start from the beginning.
Once you have resolved all the conflicts, only then you will be able to take the Share Edits action.
Summary of All Changes (previously known as Merge Summary)
At any point, if you want to check the summary of all the changes in My Draft and the Shared Draft, this card displays the changes per zone and indicates if a new item is added, removed, changed, or in conflict using appropriate text and colors.
Red for deletion, Orange for conflict, Yellow for changes, and Green for addition.