A better solution for sharing content drafts

Cory Angell

Vote:

tl;dr: I want to be able to create a link to a production page in a draft state (but not published) and share it with other users on the company network/VPN without them having to login to Episerver.

If this isn’t possible, is it possible to set this up with an “Employee” usergroup so I can limit their access to viewing these draft pages only?

Can this be siloed by project as well?

For example: I have 2 projects going on simultaneously.

Help center refresh: multiple page updates to the help pages.

I'd like to be able to share the drafts from "help center refresh" with one link (or links) and "contact us update" with a different link (or links) without the help center refresh draft changes showing up for the contact us updates and visa versa.

For reference, I believe this should work for what I'd like to accomplish:

https://support.episerver.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002462391--Preview-functionality-outside-the-Episerver-edit-mode

http://marisks.net/2017/05/23/episerver-commerce-content-version-preview/

I'm also interested in the "Preview Links" this article discusses in section 5 since I can't seem to find any Episerver documentation on that feature.

https://www.wearediagram.com/blog/5-ways-episerver-eliminates-the-need-for-a-staging-environment

My current workflow for providing mockups to our legal/compliance team is to build out the blocks and publish the page in staging, then export the content and import it into the production environment when it’s ready to publish. This works fine for new content since the process of exporting and importing works fine when there isn’t anything existing on the site. When I try to do this to update existing content I tend to get errors and the process becomes more complicated.

I’d like to simplify the process by being able to share “preview links” to draft content I create in projects so I don’t need to create content twice or build it in the stage environment then import it into production.

I'm using EPiServer 7.5

Thanks Episerver community!

#192219

Edited, May 11, 2018 0:37

Viet Anh

Vote:

Hi Cory,

There's no way to view draft content without logging in :)

I can check your solution that create the "Employee" user group. Note that you're using EPiServer 7.5, which is quite old and some functions may be obsoleted.

I'll be back with some sample codes if possible.

/Viet Anh

#192220

May 11, 2018 6:06

Quan Mai

Vote:

With all due respect I think the requirements you have are a bit odd. I mean it's techinically possible, but it feels like working against the system, not working with it. And as Viet Anh said, 7.5 is very very old now - so it's hard for us to provide meaningful solution.

One possible solution (which I'm not sure that can work in 7.5), is to implement IPublishedStateAssessor, and does not filter the contents if you are in the intranet (this can be fairly tricky to know, unless you are using some local host). The problem is I know IPublishedStateAssessor is available in later versions but I can't be sure that it's available in 7.5. As always, we suggest to upgrade to latest version possible - you will get more benefits than you might think.

#192223

May 11, 2018 9:16

Scott Reed

Vote:

It's on the roadmap this year of Episerver to add in external review support within the content approval workflow specifically for these sort of scenarios. As this was recently added to commerce I'd imagine once this is in it would support your requirements

#192239

May 11, 2018 15:01