I have a question on making the sys_communityid field visible in our input forms. We have been getting requests from our users that they have created content items in the wrong community and would like to have it changed. Presently, we have been doing this through the database, but we would like to move forward and have this available to users to make the change.
I have been informed by a colleague that we were told by certain people in Percussion that we should not be doing this and it may cause problems. But, I was on the phone with support and was recommended that we go this route.
So, just to get a clarification, if we make the field visible in the form, will that cause any problems in the system?
It basically all boils down to workflow. In the CONTENTSTATUS table a content content item has a COMMUNITYID, WORKFLOWAPPID and CONTENTSTATEID. If you just change the COMMUNITYID (by a control on the content editor) then you have to make sure that content’s workflow is also visible in the community that you’re moving it to else the content will be effectly locked until manually change in the database.
If you use a workflow that is common across all communities then I cannot see a problem showing the community field in the content editor.
Might be worth getting an offical response from percussion first though.
If you want an “official response”, the official response is that it is not supported.
We never intended this to used this way, and we don’t know if it would work or not.
As James has stated, Workflow is a key issue. You also have a multi-locale system, and moving things between communities may also require changing the sys_lang field.
I can see some potential operational issues: when you press the “Update” button, and the change takes effect, you can no longer modify the item. This means that the user will probably see an error in the content editor, even if the change is saved in the table.
Changing the community directly in the back-end, while it’s not something we advertise, at least we know that it works (subject to the limitations on workflow and locale mentioned previously).
I’m also not sure that it’s a good idea to allow your users to move any item to any community at any time. You might well want to restrict this (assuming it works at all) to items in the Draft state.
It works perfectly for us in a single-locale, single workflow situation. I shall be wary in future about workflow though. The only thing that happens is if the community changes the user gets an error if trying to save the content item again in the content editor since they’re no longer in the community the item belongs to. Other than that we’ve had no issues…