Variations problem - Content getting overwritten
Hello:
I have setup a multilingual Publishing site for our corporate website.
When we make changes to English site, it is overwriting the existing content on the French site. How can we stop this?
ThanksDenny Eapen
Réponses
Someone with a similar problem to yours was advised this on http://www.themssforum.com/PortalServer/MOSS-Site-97315/
"For every scheduled task like this there is a job defined by
> SharePoint Central Administrator. Check the "Timer job definitions"
> under global configuration in the operations section. If you have a
> multi language publishing site with source site and other language
> sites defined in the hierarchy, a job by name "Variations Propogate
> Page Defintion" iscreated as part central admin jobs. Find out the job
> related to your site and disable it, enable it whenever you want to
> propagate the content. But when you enable it, it will try to publish
> all the content. So be careful
If you want to further analyze it, here are few more clues
All the jobs info is stored in the Sharepoint config database inside
the timerjobs table
and related stored procs are "proc_gettimerrunningjobs*",
proc_startTimerRunningjobs". These procedures might help you. "Not sure I advocate this as you still want to auto create pages I gather? Anyway, up to you what you decide.
Hi Jamie:
This is the most appropriate and easy solution for me for now. Thanks for the suggestion.
I did the following.
1. Created all possible pages in English.
2. Then disabled the Page Variations timer job. By doing so, the changes are not propagated to the French site.
Central Administration Site - Operations tab - Variations Propogate Page Defintion - Disable.After this if I create a new sub-site, then I can create a New Site Variation from Site Content and Structure page.
And, if I create a new page, then I can create its variation by selecting Tools - Update Variations from the Page Editing Toolbar.
Thanks for all your help and suggestions.
Denny
Toutes les réponses
MOSS Publishing Sites are designed to push content out from a Source Variation (Your English Site) to Target Variations (Your French Site).
When you publish content in your Source Variation, that content is duplicated to your Target Variations as a Minor Unpublished version of the text. It is up to your organisation to implement workflow/processes to have this content translated (if necessary) before being published (and visible to all) on your Target Variations.
You do have some control over what is pushed out and when however. If you visit the configuration page;
https://yourRootSite/_Layouts/VariationSettings.aspx
That will give you the options of not creating pages automatically in your target variations. (But content will still be pushed.)
It is possible to stop content going out to Target Variations entirely, but first I need to ask the following questions;
Can you confirm you are getting minor versions (NOT Major!?) of the English content created in your French site?
Have you planned for Translation of the content from English to French?
Do you really want the English content duplicating on your French site, or is it just the same page structure you want with quite different local content?
Hi Jamie:
Thanks for your reply.
However, I do not understand some of your questions - the reason purely being that I am not a MOSS WCM master.
Ideally, I would want something like this:
The very first time when I create an English page with contents, I would like a corresponding French page to be created (with the English contents) - And this is happening because that is the default behaviour of Variations.
I am planning for my French editors to do manually translation and update the French pages.
Now, after the French editors have done their work, if I go back and make some modifications to the English pages - a new draft with English contents is placed in the French site. The French editors have to then go through the hassle of selecting the previous version of the French page from the Version history and then delete the draft manually.
What I am looking for is how to avoid this draft being placed in the French site.
I hope I am clear.
Thanks for all your help.
Denny
Denny,
It appears that the behaviour you've been seeing is what you should be seeing by design with the variations system. There is a configuration setting you need to change to get the behaviour you need. Please read the full instructions and description I give here before actioning anything. Variations can be broken!
From your English site, go to Site Actions -> Site Settings -> Modify All Site Settings.
In the 'Site Collection Administration' column, select 'Go to top level site settings'.
You are now in the settings page for the top level site. At the bottom right you will see the link 'Variations'. Click it.
Under 'Automatic Creation' set the option button to be "Do not recreate a new target page when the source page is republished".
What will this do?
This will mean that when you create new pages in your English site, those new pages will not automatically be created in the French site. It also means that when you edit content and Publish in the English site, that content will not be written as a minor version in your French site.
So after this change, if you create wholly new pages in your English site how do you get them copied into your French site for translation? Easy. On the page, go to Tools -> Update Variations. If there is no version of that page in a target variation, a new one will be created.
So, you'll need to tell the variations when to create new pages manually, but you won't have that annoying English minor version annoying your French editors. Problem solved.
You do have to be careful with Variations as they can be fragile, so please let me know in advance of actioning these instructions if they are not clear.
Jamie
Hi Jamie:
Thanks for your efforts. However, my problem is still not solved. Also, I would like to mention that I had followed all your steps even before posting this post.
I did the following - step by step.
- Site Actions - Site Settings - Modify All Site Settings. Under Site Collection Administration - Variations.
-
In the Automatic Creation section - selected Do not automatically create site and page variations
- In the Recreate Deleted Target Page section - selected Do not recreate a new target page when the source page is republished
-
Then I created a new English page. The French page did not get created automatically. Good. That's fine. Then went to Tools - Update Variations. Now the French page is there. Again good. I approved both the newly English and French pages and everything is fine till now.
-
Now I go and edit the English page and approve it. And, what do I see when I come to the French side. I see a annoying minor draft version waiting for approval for the French editors.
I read some place that this is a known problem and the solution to this is to create a workflow that deletes the draft. I am not sure how to do it.
Any further insight would be really appreciated.
Thanks
Denny
I see! I hadn't seen that behaviour before to be honest, but I re-created it in my sandbox environment easily enough.
Microsoft would say this is by design too. Target Variation Page and Site creation are triggered manually, but it says nothing about Content Publishing. Therefore once a page variation has been created (manually) it updates content like any other variation. This isn't a bug, but down to the semantics of the Variations Configuration page!
As for your workflow; The way to do it is to add a custom column called (say) 'isTranslated' to your content type and therefore to your page. This column would contain a default value = 0. If the workflow in your French site detected a new page version (minor version) that was greater than version 0.1, but with isTranslated = 0 then delete that minor version of the page. When the page is first shifted from version 0.1 in the French site, workflow would also have to flip that flag to 1.
This workflow would be configured to start whenever an item changed. You'd then attach this workflow to your publishing pages and voila!
However, the workflow gurus on the other board may be able to help you more with custom workflows. Some people write them on a daily basis, whereas I write workflows more like once a month!
Someone with a similar problem to yours was advised this on http://www.themssforum.com/PortalServer/MOSS-Site-97315/
"For every scheduled task like this there is a job defined by
> SharePoint Central Administrator. Check the "Timer job definitions"
> under global configuration in the operations section. If you have a
> multi language publishing site with source site and other language
> sites defined in the hierarchy, a job by name "Variations Propogate
> Page Defintion" iscreated as part central admin jobs. Find out the job
> related to your site and disable it, enable it whenever you want to
> propagate the content. But when you enable it, it will try to publish
> all the content. So be careful
If you want to further analyze it, here are few more clues
All the jobs info is stored in the Sharepoint config database inside
the timerjobs table
and related stored procs are "proc_gettimerrunningjobs*",
proc_startTimerRunningjobs". These procedures might help you. "Not sure I advocate this as you still want to auto create pages I gather? Anyway, up to you what you decide.
Hi Jamie:
I appreciate all your answers and your help.
I am now trying to understand and play with custom workflows. On succeeding, I will let you know and also post the steps here.
The problem is every where I looked, they mention "what" can be done and nobody mentions "how" to do. I was looking at a more step-by-step instructions. I guess I willl have to be the first one to put something out there.
Thanks again
Hi Jamie:
This is the most appropriate and easy solution for me for now. Thanks for the suggestion.
I did the following.
1. Created all possible pages in English.
2. Then disabled the Page Variations timer job. By doing so, the changes are not propagated to the French site.
Central Administration Site - Operations tab - Variations Propogate Page Defintion - Disable.After this if I create a new sub-site, then I can create a New Site Variation from Site Content and Structure page.
And, if I create a new page, then I can create its variation by selecting Tools - Update Variations from the Page Editing Toolbar.
Thanks for all your help and suggestions.
Denny
I am new to MOSS and variations so please forgive me if this solution is of no use.
Would a more simplistic solution to you problem not be to have a source variation acting as the master and treat your english variation as a slave to that.
For example, have Source, English, French and Spanish.
When you want to make a change that is global i.e. a new page creation that every site needs to have propagated or a significant change of the content of a page that should be translated by your business units, use the Source Variation.
When you want to make a small isolated amendment to change only the English variation rather than the master?
Hope this helps
- Yes we have the same problem you're facing.
Seems that the only place to disable the auto variation feature is in Central Admin.
We're also facing another issue.... The site is 400 pages english/french.
It seems that after editing updating publishing a certian number of pages in french the service account kicks in and automatically udpates all french pages. (basically deleting all french content and all french summary link webparts / content query webparts)
Somewhere around 100-150 page edits in french.
We're also exporting webparts and importing webparts from english pages to french pages.
When you go to page history on the french side (where the new english content was created) the page history shows that the service account did an automatic web part update (for some reason) which forced the page variation to update. (UGHHHH)
Sorry for the lack of detail. I'll try and post the specific message tomorrow.
Thanks all,
CS
