Content Sharing

djminmin

We have a request to have content sharing between sections within a website, or between 2 websites. But there's restriction, the existing workflow cannot be modified (the workflow is a basic one which will only deploy static files [e.g. html, jpg, js, css...etc] to webserver via OD)

The current TeamSite structure is...

Branch: Site A
Workarea: Section A1, Section A2, Section A3

Branch: Site B
Workarea: Section B1, Section B2, Section B3

How could I do content sharing without modifying the workflow? (we are using TeamSite 7.2)

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The only way I could think of is to group 2 branches, and separate Site A & B by Workarea... i.e.

Branch: Main
Workarea: Site A, Site B

and place all the date forms to each workarea..... so that user could hit the Generate button in a data form, to generate the same piece of content to multi html files in different folders within the same workarea.

But here come another problems...
1) if [data form A] generated [a1.html] and [a2.html] (both has the same content), and later on, user wants to edit the content of [a2.html] only. [a1.html] could has affected, as both html are sharing the same data form

2) still cannot solve the content sharing between sites issue... as I cannot generate html to other workareas
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So our question is, are there anyway to do content sharing between sections/sites? Or, are there any better way to re-constructe the branch/workare rather than the one i have think of?

Thanks

Bowker

I was with you until the last few statements.

If HTML1 and HTML2 were built using the same data (DCR) then if you change the DCR for HTML1 and you rebuild HTML2 it will pick up the changed content. Either content is shared or it's not. That is pretty black-n-white.

As to sharing content across multiple branches, again I'm assuming DCRs, you can create an "iwat" process (also called "at job") that monitors your DCRs and when one changes it is copied to the other branch. But that's only part of your issue. I'm not sure if each DCR has it's own identifier that's stored in the database or not. If it does, more work will be required to get that ID and do something with it.

Once the content is updated on the other branch you will need to do something with it. Going back to HTML1 and HTML2, you should rebuild HTML2. That also can be done in the IWAT script.

Depending upon how clever you are you could even have that IWAT script fire off a new workflow that has the same characteristics (authors/approvers...) as the original workflow.

You stated a number of times that you can't change the workflow. Does that mean that you can't change the workflow at all, or just the perceived flow of the workflow. For example if you have 4 steps in your flow, but you need to insert a 5th external task, no one would see the change but it would accomplish the necessary operations. If you can't change the flow at all, then you will either need to use something like an AT job or have the users create a second workflow.