Can anyone tell me why this page is showing as ‘locked’ by my user when another user tries to edit it? I’m running into this issue a lot. Here are the steps to reproduce:
Create a new section via Navigation View
create a landing page for that section using the wrong template
create a new landing page using the correct template
Navigation view - drag that new landing page (with the correct template) onto the new section created in step 1)
Once I do this (for many sections) another user tries to edit the new landing page, and gets an error :
Can someone tell me
a) What I’m doing wrong?
b) How to find all the cases that will happen?
c) How to correct it easily so I don’t take calls / emails from other users asking if they can edit certain pages when I’m 100% sure that I am done with them?
Not appropriately closing pages will cause this warning. When you go and work on a page, either make sure to Save and CLOSE the page or if it needs to move forward in the workflow,move it forward using Approve or Submit…
If I open a page, work on it, save then open another page, the first page isnot appropriately closed and the system thinks that I am still working on it. Any other user attempting to edit it will get a warning. If the other user is also in an Admin role, they will have the override option, if they are just a contributor, they will not have the override option.
So answering your questions:
a) Make sure to Save then CLOSE all pages if you are not moving them along in the workflow.
b) The easiest way I can think of is to open all pages you worked on and either Close them by clicking the CLOSE button or push them through workflow if they are ready (Submit, Approve or Reject)
c) Close pages.
This is what I think the cause of this is… Other comments are welcome.
a) So it sounds like on page creation (Step 2 or Step 3) that I’m not Approving, Submitting, or Even Closing the page before going to navigation view.
Would it be appropriate to give a warning when navigating away from this page while the page is not yet submitted / approved / or even closed? Warning could give all (available) of these options to do and continue as well as cancel to stay on the ‘open’ page… I can submit this as a separate idea if needed.
b) & c) Does the Pages by Status gadget tell me if user has something locked for editing? I don’t see that as an option in the settings:
Would that be an idea for an enhancement to this gadget?
I’ve done hundreds of pages in the past few days and knowing exactly which ones are still locked by me requires opening and approving every page, as far as I can tell.
To my knowledge, there is no way to find pages based on if somebody is editing them currently or not using the Pages By Status Gadget. It would however be a great feature request. I also like the warning message idea before navigating away from a page that is not properly closed…
The only EASY solution I can see here is to get the Pages by Status Gadget to show you all pages that are in a certain status and sort the results by your user name… Then open each page and properly close each or push them to the next workflow step… Unfortunately, we currently do not have the ability to Bulk Approve Pages so moving forward, when you are done with a page, just Approve it so you don’t have to come back to it again.
I wouldn’t recommend approving it before moving away from it. Submitting it is safer but even that puts it into the Workflow to be reviewed. The reason I wouldn’t approve it when moving away is because it will go into pending status. If you are not ready for something to be published to the live server, don’t approve it yet. Submitting will keep it in review state so it won’t get published if someone does a full publish before you are ready.
If you approve it and aren’t ready for it to go live, and someone does a full publish, you will have incomplete pages on your live site and that is not a recommended practice.
I agree that approving may cause pages that you don’t want to send live to get published next time you run a full publish but keep in mind that if you are in a full migration scenario, once you submit all pages (if you are working on hundreds of pages at a time) someone will eventually have to go to each submitted page and approve them individually.
This scenario happens if you are in a one person migration situation. From past experiences, if you are tasked with the full migration of a site, going back and approving each page separately could cost you some time. (CM1 currently does not offer a bulk approve functionality). If you have someone else who needs to go and review and approve each page, before they go live anyway, Submitting is the best way to go.
This could possibly be an extension of the Pages By Status Gadget or a new gadget with similar functionality showing all pages that are locked for editing.
This becomes vital in the final stages of implementing a site and content before going live.
If something gets locked in a draft state it won’t get published to the live site and the only way to tell is by a) clicking through all of the published site or b) using Pages by Status gadget to view (and individually open) all pages in draft state.
I merged this reply with this post because it is directly related. Because it was a bug that has now been resolved, it would seem as a gadget for this would not be necessary.
Give the user a warning when (s)he is about to leave a page while it’s checked out.
See my situation / question titled : “Locked Page” A warning would have really saved me some time in the long run if I’d known that I was leaving a page checked out to me.
Warning could give all (available) options [Close, Approve, Submit] to do and continue as well as cancel to stay on the ‘open’ page.
I merged this from an idea to this thread because it is directly related. As it was a bug that has now been resolved, a warning is no longer necessary.
Sorry to resurrect this thread after so many months but I am now in the same place as the OP.
If someone other than an admin opens a page and it warns them the page is locked, the answer above seems to indicate that the admin should be able to just open that page and hit the “close” button. But this does not unlock the page for the other user.
Upon opening the page, the first visible “close” button should be ignored and instead, the admin needs to click the “edit” button THEN the “close” button. IOW, the first “close” button doesn’t really mean anything as far as the lock/unlock process is concerned.
Ideally, if you are an admin with the rights to do so, it would be great if, after loading a page, there was a button to free the page for others to edit instead of having to first “edit” then hit the “close” button. Opening a page that was not properly closed would show options such as this:
Of course, ideally the dashboard P.B.S. gadget is the place to really control this function. Right now, it has limited capability IMO, vis a vis batch approval, single page status changes, and status filtering. The development roadmap for this gadget might be to provide a way to handle basic status changes to a page that don’t otherwise need to have the page open to move it through the workflow.
Here is one idea on how to improve the functionality of the Pages by Status gadget:
Yes you are correct, hitting the Close button while the page is open in the editor – and not the read-only view – is the only way to properly relinquishes the page. I realize some of the responses in this old thread don’t make that clear.
I think you’ve hit on a really good idea with the thought of managing you contents check-in / check-out states through the dashboard. However, I might even go beyond that, and propose that this could be part of a larger “User Activity” gadget, through which Admins can track what content their users are and have been working on. The feature you outline could be integrated into this, where there would be a way to sort content based on how long it’s been checked out (indicating that the user might have inadvertently left the content checked out), with the option to easily “bump” the inactive users from the pages to free them up.
As an aside, I do want to point out that the bulk approval function that you mentioned will be added to the Pages By Status gadget in our upcoming release.
This happened to me alot - (I call it a “User Error”), so each morning I made it part of my routine to also review the workflow for items “checked out”. If I did it, I checked them back in, but if someone else did and I see it was more than 24 hours, I send them a quick reminder.
One reason I do this is because we have 1 Editor and 1 Contributor in each site and they really need to pay attention to the page status. Mainly because the other issue I have is users forgetting to press Submit on files/images/pages they want published.
I learned to make this and “The Blue X is Evil” talk… part of my weekly training.
Leaving pages checked out (locked) is a bug that has been already been fixed for the upcoming version 2.7. After the fix, pages would be unlocked or checked in any time the user navigates to another part of the CM1 UI or opens another page or asset. The case Mark noted above has been fixed as well.
The only time a page would be left in a locked state is if the user performs a browser level action to navigate away from CM1 while a page is open such as closing a tab, typing a new url in the browser, closing the browser, etc. Also, if a user has a page open in CM1 and their session times out, the page would be left in a locked state.
