Working with versions

Tip:  You can watch the following demonstration video, Video: Publishing content. (4:18 minutes)

Whenever you create new content or edit existing content, a draft version is automatically created. This is not publicly available on the website until actively published. Changes to content properties are immediately autosaved by the system. Versioning is not used for drafts, which means that you and other editors can work on the same draft over time but you still will have only one version of the draft.

You can manually create a draft from a previously published version or from a version that is scheduled for publishing at a later time. This is done from the Options menu.

—Image: Create new draft—

While editing, clicking the Undo option in the page information area lets you undo changes to content that was previously autosaved.

• Select Undo to discard the changes done since the last autosave.

  Note:  You can only undo changes you have made during the current editing session. As soon as you move to another page, close the browser, log out, and so on, the history of actions that can be undone is emptied.

• Select Redo if you discarded your changes through Undo and want to take them back again.
• Select Revert to Published to take back the latest published version, if the content was previously published.

—Image: Redo action—

You can preview content appearance using the Preview mode option in the top toolbar. You can also preview content by language, visitor group or display channel if these are used on your website; see Previewing.

You can also compare different content versions by using the Compare version option in the top toolbar; see Comparing versions.

When done editing, click Publish? at the top and then Publish (or Publish Changes, if you are editing previously published content). The content is immediately published and publicly available on the website, provided that no access restrictions apply. Click View on website to view the content as it appears on the website.

You can also republish on older version of a page, see Managing versions.

If you do not have publishing access rights, or if you want your changes to be approved by someone else before publishing, use the Ready to Publish option to mark the content as ready for approval and publishing. Withdraw and Edit lets you take back content for further editing after sent for approval.

—Image: Withdraw and edit—

If your site is set up to use content approvals, your content may have to be approved by one or more approvers before it can be published. In that case, you do not have the Publish? option, and you have to set the content to Ready for Review when you are done. Doing this starts the approval sequence. When all approvers have approved the content, you are notified and you can publish the content or schedule it for late publishing. See Content approvals.

—Image: Ready to Review—

If you have publishing access rights, you can approve and publish changes for content with the status Ready to publish. You can also decide to reject the changes, in which case the content version status is set to Rejected. This does not mean that the latest changes disappear, only that you need to edit the content again before it can be ready for publishing. You can monitor content status and related tasks under Tasks in edit view.

—Image: Reject changes—

If you have publishing access rights, you can schedule the publishing to occur at a later occasion. Select the Schedule for Publish option, and set the date and time when you want the content (new or updated) to be published. This applies to both newly created content, and changes to existing content.

Content that is scheduled for publishing, is locked for editing. Select the Remove Scheduling and Edit option to interrupt the scheduled publishing and continue editing the selected version.

—Image: Remove scheduling—

Selecting New Draft from Here creates a new draft, based on the scheduled version, which is still published at the scheduled time. You can continue working on the new draft, and apply publishing actions for this, as desired. An advanced scenario would be to apply multiple publishing occasions for different versions of a campaign page, having them replace each other in a desired order.

Content can have the following status in the version list:

• Draft. Content that is a work-in-progress and is not yet subject to any publishing actions.
• Published. The most recently published version and the one publicly displayed. Only one published version can exist.
• In review. Content must be approved before it can be published. See Content approvals.
• Previously Published. One or more versions that were published before the latest published version.
• Ready to Publish. Content awaiting approval and publishing.
• Rejected. The content was set as Ready for Review or Ready to Publish and an approver has rejected the content. You can edit and update the rejected content and then set it to Ready for Review or Ready to Publish again.
• Scheduled for Publish. Content scheduled to be published at a specified time.
• Expired. Content where a stop publish date and time is set and passed. The stop publish date applies to all versions of a page, which means that you cannot have one version of a page that is expired and one that is published.

Note:   You can define the number of stored content versions in the administration view. The default setting is 20.

Note:   Versioning works differently if you are working with projects. For a more detailed description on how Episerver handles versioning in projects, see Versioning when working in projects.

The primary draft is the draft presented in edit view, when accessing the content. Multiple drafts may exist, by default the latest saved edited version is the primary draft.

Use the Set as Primary Draft option in the version list to make another draft the primary one.

—Image: Set as primary draft—

A content item that is not published can have only one draft. You can create multiple drafts from published versions, each draft is editable individually and you can schedule for publishing at different times. There are no versioning of drafts so there is only one version of each draft.

The content version selected in the version list is loaded into the editing area, from where you can edit the content or perform other available publishing actions.

Select the Delete Version option to delete a version. Content versions are not supported by trash management. So, when you delete a version in the versions gadget, the version is permanently deleted.

Note:   The version with status Published cannot be deleted, to do this another version needs to be published first. Deleting content versions cannot be undone. You can disable the ability to delete versions in the administration view.

If the selected content exists in multiple languages, language versions are displayed with a language code. To filter versions for a desired language, select Show Content in Current Language Only in the version list.

—Image: Show Content in Current Language Only—

To republish a previously published version, select the desired version from the Versions gadget and select Republish from the Options menu. When you republish content, for traceability reasons, a new version with a new timestamp is created, even if no changes were made.

—Image: Republish—

Even if content is marked as being edited, another editor can select the Edit Anyway option, and continue working with the draft.

—Image: Edit anyway—

The currently being edited markup setting is automatically cleared after some time. To keep this setting, you can set a permanently being edited markup through the All Properties editing view by selecting Tools > Permanently Mark as Being Edited. This setting remains until manually disabled (toggle the setting to disable).