Publishing and versioning assets

Each asset has a status of either Modified, Ready to Publish, or Published:

  • Modified assets are typically assets that have not been finalized. When you create an asset (including a letter template), its status is set to Modified.

  • Ready to Publish assets are complete and are ready to be published for use. These assets can be published automatically when publishing a dependent asset. An asset is marked as Ready to Publish if you explicitly marked, or if the system updates a Published asset.

  • Published assets are used in the final correspondence. When publishing an asset, all the assets that use this asset, or ones this asset use are scanned to ensure that they are in a Published or Ready To Publish state. All of the assets in Ready To Publish state are published automatically. If any asset is in a Modify state, the publish operation is aborted. When editing a Published asset it is moved to the Modified state.

Data Dictionaries are not published automatically along with dependent assets. You are required to explicitly publish Data Dictionaries separately. When publishing or reverting assets the state of dependent assets, parents and children, can cause unexpected results. Here are a few examples:

Action

Result

Mark an asset ReadyToPublish and then try to publish it.

On publishing a never published asset, only its children are published along with it. If the asset has no child asset, it is published successfully.

Reverting an asset with dependencies that has never been published

Message is shown that an asset that is never published and has dependencies cannot be reverted. Revert operations cannot be performed on never published assets if there are dependencies on this asset.

Reverting an asset with no dependencies that has never been published

Message is shown that revert operation deletes this asset because it has never been published and there is no dependency on it. Upon clicking OK, the asset is deleted.

Mark asset as ready to publish, while some of its children are in the Modified state, and then try to publish it.

A dialog is displayed with error message that asset cannot be published, because some of its children are in Modified state. On publishing a never published asset, all of the children are published along with it, which requires that all the children be in Published or ReadyToPublish state.

Mark all children of an asset as ReadyToPublish, and Publish the asset.

A dialog is displayed with message that publishing this letter also publishes the dependent assets. Upon clicking OK, all the assets are published.

Mark an asset ReadyToPublish and then Publish while the parent is in the Modified state.

A dialog is displayed with message that this asset cannot be published because its parent is in modified state. When publishing an asset that has been published earlier, all the parent and child assets are in ReadyToPublish or Published state.

Republishing an asset whose child asset has another parent asset with a different child asset in the Modified state.

A dialog is displayed with message that this list cannot be published because an asset is in modified state. When publishing an asset that has been published earlier, all the parent and child assets along with their dependencies are in ReadyToPublish or Published state.

Publish all assets. Modify a child asset to add variable (to update all parent asset states to Ready to Publish - when editing the parent letter, for example, the new variable is visible in the data mapping tab). Revert the asset.

A dialog is displayed with message that this operation updates the parent asset. Upon clicking OK, the child asset is reverted to its last published version and the new variable mapping is removed from the parent asset.

Note: When publishing a letter, remotely associated assets are also shown as dependencies. For example, if you create a letter with a condition using text assets, then create a second letter that uses the same condition, and finally create a third letter that uses the same text assets, when you publish the letter, all letters, text assets, and conditions are listed as dependencies. When you mouse over the dependencies their associations are shown.

Template Authors and Employees Interfacing with Customers

There are two users that have distinct roles when performing publishing tasks:
  • Template Authors: create Content (such as Text paragraphs, Images, Lists, Conditions, and so on.) and Correspondence Templates. The authors typically work using the Manage Assets user interface to Create, Edit and Manage assets. They also use the Create Correspondence user interface, for previewing the correspondence templates. Content (or Assets) created would lie on this instance until published. Once published, the asset is versioned and replicated over to the Publish instance.

  • Employees Interfacing with Customers: create/generate the final correspondence, using the available/authored templates and content. These employees typically work using the Create Correspondence user interface, to interactively generate the final correspondence, based on the defined template. Once the correspondence creation is complete, they finish the correspondence by either submitting the same to their end workflow, or saving it as draft, or other custom actions that are configured on the application.

Reverting an asset

To revert an asset, select the asset from the list and click the Revert button. The warning message box for that asset is displayed, explaining the selected asset reverts to its previously published version. Select OK. You can only revert Modified or Ready to Publish assets. Published assets cannot be reverted.
Note: Reverting an asset that has never been published deletes the asset from the system.

Marking an asset ready to publish

To make an asset ready to publish, select the asset from the list and click the Ready to Publish button. Only assets with the Modified status can be made ready to publish.

Publishing an asset

To publish an asset, select the asset from the list and click the Publish button. Only assets with the Ready to Publish status can be published.

Deactivating a Letter

You can deactivate a letter from the Publish Instance.

To deactivate a letter, select a letter on the Author instance that has been published at least once and click Deactivate.

If the letter is in Publish state, it moves to the Ready To Publish state, else the letter remains in its current state in the Author instance. The letter on the Publish instance is deleted.

Note: If a published letter has letter Instances in the Draft state, you cannot deactivate the letter.

Data Dictionaries

Data dictionaries are not published automatically when dependent assets are published. You are required to explicitly publish data dictionaries.

// Ethnio survey code removed