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Last Published Date incorrect?

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djsedil

19 May, 2016 07:17 PM

Hi there,
I am bombarding you this week because a lot of development has been going on in Cascade recently. We have a group that relies on the "last published date" for collecting data and we are finding that the publish date does not appear to be updating every time the page is published. We turned off Smart Publishing for that reason, but we are still seeing this strange behavior where documents that haven't been touched in awhile that are getting republished are showing a publish date of 5/2/2016 (even though they were published yesterday). And today, if we publish those same files again, they are reflecting as last published yesterday.
This doesn't seem like expected behavior?
Thanks!

1. 1 Posted by Bradley Wagner on 19 May, 2016 08:38 PM

   

   Hi, can you describe the general method of publishing? Are the assets in question being published directly, via workflow, via their containing folder? The audits may help answer this question.

   Thanks!

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2. 2 Posted by djsedil on 19 May, 2016 08:47 PM

   

   Publishes are being done both directly and via workflow.
   Dumb question: where can I go to look at the audits?

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3. 3 Posted by Bradley Wagner on 19 May, 2016 08:54 PM

   

   You can either go to the asset itself and click audits under the more menu or if you know the user or group that did the publishing, you can go to that user/group and view its audits around the time the asset was published.

   Which trigger are you using to publish assets in your workflows?

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4. 4 Posted by djsedil on 19 May, 2016 09:02 PM

   

   So looking at the audits for a few specific pages, there is no item that published on the date in which the last publish date matches.

   We are using the publish trigger, but also a publish set trigger that has to publish dependent pages at the same time.

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5. Support Staff 5 Posted by Tim on 23 May, 2016 05:47 PM

   

   Hi,

   Out of curiosity, when you go to Administration -> Dashboard -> Information, is the System Time field correct? I noticed you mentioned:

   And today, if we publish those same files again, they are reflecting as last published yesterday.

   which seems really strange to me. I don't think I've ever had behavior like this reported, so I'm wondering if the system time may be off.

   Thanks

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6. 6 Posted by djsedil on 23 May, 2016 05:49 PM

   

   That is a great question and that was my first best guess. Alas, the system time is correct. ☹

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7. Support Staff 7 Posted by Tim on 23 May, 2016 05:51 PM

   

   If you publish something right now and then check the Last Published On field, is it correct?

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8. 8 Posted by djsedil on 23 May, 2016 06:11 PM

   

   Looking at the one page published this morning by one of my users, yes it is correct. We haven’t quite figured out the pattern why it is wrong on some pages and not others.

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9. 9 Posted by djsedil on 23 May, 2016 06:19 PM

   

   Oh! But we did notice that in most cases, if they were republishing pages that had been published previously but no changes were made, the date was messed up. If they make a change and then publish, it works just fine (like in the case of this morning).
   But the catch is that it doesn’t appear like it is neglecting to update the published (i.e. keeps old last-published-on), it updates it to some undetermined date that is in that past from today but later than when it was actually last published.

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10. Support Staff 10 Posted by Tim on 23 May, 2016 06:27 PM

    

    Oh! But we did notice that in most cases, if they were republishing pages that had been published previously but no changes were made, the date was messed up.

    Are these actual Page assets or File assets? This will be important to know because Smart Publishing is only applicable to Files.

    Also, how are you all determining that the 'pages' had been published previously? Were you checking the Last Published On field to confirm this? And if so, is the date already incorrect here or only after publishing the asset again without any changes?

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11. 11 Posted by djsedil on 23 May, 2016 07:04 PM

    

    Admittedly we were going off of when our users said they published specific pages. Lately we are trying to going off of the Audits.
    These are page assets not file assets.
    We turned off Smart Publishing as a test.

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12. Support Staff 12 Posted by Tim on 23 May, 2016 07:08 PM

    

    Gotcha. Thanks for the info. Moving forward, what we'll probably want for you all to do anytime you see similar behavior in the future:

    1. Attach your entire cascade.log file from that day
       
    2. Attach the relevant publish message (in the Home -> Dashboard -> Messages section of the User that published) from the asset in question
       
    3. Provide a screen shot showing the Last Published On information that is incorrect
       
    4. Let us know how exactly the asset was published (manually? via publish set? via workflow trigger?)

    Thanks!

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13. 13 Posted by djsedil on 23 May, 2016 07:35 PM

    

    Okay, I will collect that the next time we see it. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

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14. Support Staff 14 Posted by Tim on 23 May, 2016 07:36 PM

    

    Sounds good!

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15. 15 Posted by djsedil on 25 May, 2016 05:39 PM

    

    Hi Tim,
    So I do have some files for you, but we were able to narrow down a pattern.
    Here are the two cases in which the published date does not seem to update:

    1) When a document has not been changed and someone re-publishes it

    2) When a workflow publishes the document

    Oddly, this behavior only seems to be happening for one site at the moment (as far as we have identified). Our dev instance of Cascade that hosts this same site for development purposes does not seem to have this issue. The difference between the two is versions. Prod is on 7.12.5 and dev is on 7.14.2
    This might be a coincidence, but this behavior began around the time we did a production database copy to qual. Could that have messed with anything?

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16. Support Staff 16 Posted by Tim on 02 Jun, 2016 01:31 PM

    

    Sorry for the delayed response here. Do you happen to know - for what you mentioned here:

    1) When a document has not been changed and someone re-publishes it

    Is the document being published directly or is it being published as a result of one of its parent folders being published?

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17. 17 Posted by djsedil on 07 Jun, 2016 09:51 PM

    

    Both.

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18. 18 Posted by Bradley Wagner on 20 Jun, 2016 04:26 PM

    

    Also when you say:

    When a document has not been changed and someone re-publishes it

    Are you referring to a Page or a File in Cascade? Smart publishing could be causing your files to not re-publish assuming they haven't changed. Pages are always re-published.

    So far, we're looking into the following:

    • Workflows that publish do not update the last published time on assets enrolled in that workflow
    • Publishing of a containing folder does not update the last published times on the content of the folder

    Thanks for the details.

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19. 19 Posted by djsedil on 27 Jul, 2016 05:58 PM

    

    We are referring to a page in Cascade. Sorry for the delay!

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