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How do you prevent conrefs from updating?

EmilMeindl
1-Newbie

How do you prevent conrefs from updating?

How do you prevent conrefs from updating automatically when the source topic is revised or updated?

I would like to use content references for Standard Warning Text but I don't want the generated text in the conrefs to automatically update when the source element is updated.

7 REPLIES 7
pnagai
4-Participant
(To:EmilMeindl)

Hi Emil,

I don't know the answer to this one. If you don't get an answer here, or if you're in a hurry, your best bet is to join the Adepters mailing list where lots and lots of Arbortext users, admins, and developers hang out 24/7/366 (it is a leap year, you know!). Information on joining that list (as well as pointers to lots of other Arbortext resources) can be found here:

http://blog.single-sourcing.com/top-arbortext-resources

Good luck!

Thanks for the mailing list Paul.

Do you want to be able to manually control when to update each conref? Or you don't need to update conrefs at all?

I need conrefs to update when we are authoring new manuals so that all new manuals will have the most recent standard warning text. However, I don't want the conrefs to update when the manual is released.

So if I use conrefs, I want to be able to publish a manual with the previous version of the standard warning text.

Is there a different way I should be going about this?

Hi Emil,

It sounds like you need to consider versioning and profiling.

You could set an attribute value on the warnings, and then filter the correct version during output.

BRs,

Anne

"I need conrefs to update when we are authoring new manuals" - how do you (and Arbortext) know if a manual is currently "authored" or already "published/released"? Is there a special attribute and/or other sign?

You could try to achieve this with attributes/profiles, as Anne suggests, but this could quickly become quite complex. You'd have to track at warnings' content changes and store which version was "actual" when a document was published.

Also, I suppose, in some cases you may want to update conref'ed text.

I'd say you should consider getting a CMS - Content Management System. You could start with Subversion (it's free and well-known). Or could contact PTC for it's own CMS system. Also, Arbortext has adapters to CMSs from other vendors.

We have PTC's CMS system, but the content reference text updates even if the source topic is revised and set to a Released State in the CMS. Revising the items doesn't prevent the conref from updating so I'm not exactly sure how I can use conrefs.

For example, a warning statement was approved at the time the manual was released. We do not want that warning statement to update everywhere it is used if/when the statement is updated by our Warning Standard Team. However, we would like to use the same content reference when the statement is updated. Is there a way to do that?

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