Publishing containers

When you create or modify a container (address book, CMDB, knowledge base, service portfolio, or workspace), you must publish or republish the container to make the most recent version available to your users. Until you publish, the changes are stored in draft form for any container that you manage in FootPrints.
You can discard the draft changes and revert the container to the last published state if you want to start over from the last stable state. To enable the Discard Unpublished Changes feature, you must publish the container that were created before the upgrade at least once.

Publishing is performed at the container level; that is, an entire workspace is published at one time, refreshing field settings, forms, relationships, and so on in one step. The system validates the updated container, and errors are generated for broken rules, missing fields, and so on. A log is also created that includes links to the container sections where the errors occurred.

The following topics are provided:

Avoiding save conflicts

When multiple users have editing permissions for an address book, for example, and attempt to save or publish changes at the same time, the Edit Lock feature prevents save conflicts from occurring. You cannot save your changes (or save and publish) while another user is editing the same address book. A warning appears, advising you of the situation.

You can cancel your Save or Save and Publish request and attempt the request again later, or discard your changes and return later to redo them. If you have the administrator permissions, the warning has an Unlock option to release the lock. Any changes made by the other user are saved.

Tip

To avoid data loss after you make changes or updates to a container, schedule your publish for when no other users are editing items in the container.

To publish a container

  1. If the container is open for editing:
    1. Click the container link in the breadcrumb trail.
    2. Click Save and Publish
  2. If the container is not open for editing:
    1. Click the Administration tab.
    2. In the appropriate container section, click Manage.
      For example, to publish a workspace, click Manage in the Workspaces section.
    3. In the container Administration page, select the container that you want to publish, and click Save and Publish.
  3. Click Yes.
    The system validates the settings. Depending on the complexity of the container, this action may take a few moments. After a container has been published, a Publication Succeeded message appears, showing the number of errors and warnings (usually zero). In the container's icon, the last line of text shows: "Published: True". If errors do occur, they are listed in the publishing log.

    Note

    If another user is working with the container at the same time, a warning about another administrator locking the container appears. You cannot continue until the editing lock has been deactivated.

  4. To view log details, click Publishing Logs on the container details page.
    A list of logs appears.
  5. To view a detailed list of the errors, click the link in the Publication Date column next to the log entry that you want to review.
    Each error includes a link to the location where you can make corrections. 

Note

If an error is for a field that you used in a rule earlier but is now missing, you must re-create the part of the rule that included it and select the correct field. This errors can occur if you have renamed or deleted a field used by a rule.

The published container settings are available immediately in the production environment. Remember to assign user roles to new containers (or update assignments if needed) so your users can access them.

Related topics

Configuring users

Configuring address books

Configuring CMDBs

Configuring knowledge bases

Configuring service portfolios

Configuring workspaces

Getting started quickly for administrators

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Comments

  1. Kevin Butler

    Does a publish make the entire footprints system unavailable temporarily or does it only make the container itself unavailable for other users in the system (in other workspaces)?

    Jan 30, 2019 12:03
    1. Dottie Wood

      Hi, Kevin. The specific container is temporarily blocked. However, because the actions of the publish involve database operations, you might also experience slower application performance temporarily.

      Jan 31, 2019 10:15