Publishing

Notes on Publishing:

• The calendar year item must be published in order to publish your catalog - if the catalog is publishing through for the first time, publish from the calendar item and include subitems!
• A catalog or items/sections within the catalog can be published as many times as needed - you cannot over publish these items, if nothing has changed within the catalog item, the published item will remain the same.
• When changes are made to single items within sections, especially program subitems (Degree Requirement folders, Requirement Lists, courses) the parent item must be published with subitems included. This ensures the html of the page is rebuilt to include the changes of the subitem changed.
• After the initial publish, a publish of the entire catalog will only publish anything that has been newly approved since the last publish.
• Checking "Publish subitems" means that you are asking the publisher to publish the item you have selected, as well as all of the subitems/child items within the selected item. If you uncheck that checkbox, you are telling the publisher to just publish the selected item and to not process anything within the item selected.
• It is also important to note that any unapproved items or versions within the catalog, will not publish until they are approved. This means any version or new item within still within the catalog workflow will remain unpublished until the item is approved.
• The publish functions in two parts - First, the items are published within Sitecore. Second, the items are published to the hosted AWS catalog site. This is explained with more details within the steps of publishing below.
• If the Catalog Title Rename field is updated/republished after a catalog has been published for the first time, a second live catalog at the new URL will exist alongside the initially published catalog.

  Example: You publish for the first time and the Catalog title is 2023-2024 General Catalog. You update the Catalog title in the Rename field, title field and Display Name field to be Undergraduate Catalog 2023-2024 and republish. There will now be two existing catalogs at two different URLs:

  domain.smartcatalogiq.com/2023-2024/2023-2024-General-Catalog

  AND

  domain.smartcatalogiq.com/2023-2024/Undergraduate-Catalog-2023-2024

  Any updates/edits made will only be displayed on the latter/most recently published catalog.

  To avoid this, make sure the Catalog title is correct in all three fields (Title, Display Name, Rename) prior to publishing for the first time to avoid duplications. If there is no way to avoid this, you can reach out to support with a request to remove the initial published catalog. when you make this request, please provide the URL of the catalog you wish to be removed.

How to Publish:

1. Select the item or section you wish to publish. If you are publishing the entire catalog, select the “Calendar Year” item represented by a small calendar icon. Please note: If there are more than one catalogs within the calendar year and you do not wish to publish them all, publish the calendar item without subitems first, then select each catalog you want published and go through the publishing steps. Make sure the "Show in catalog list" checkbox is unchecked for any unpublished catalog you do not want displayed within the drop down list.



2. Under the Publish tab, select “Publish”. (The word, not the globe.)



3. Then select the drop down “Publish Item”.



4. The publishing wizard will launch and there are a series of checkboxes present. The first will automatically be selected - this is indicating the action that will take place when publishing.



5. If you want to include all subitems under the item you have selected for publishing, only the "Publish subitems" needs to be checked ("Publish related items" checkbox is no longer relevant, please disregard).  (Please Note: If you are publishing the whole catalog or the parent item of an item you have changed, you want this box checked so the publish will process all of the catalog items and publish anything newly approved since the last publish). Uncheck this checkbox if you wish to just publish the item selected independently.



6. The first time you publish within the system, you may need to check "English" for the desired publishing language. Click “Publish”



7. You can wait for the item/items to finish publishing and click “Finish”, or you may just close the wizard and it will continue publishing until it is finished. Closing the wizard before the item has finished publishing does not interrupt or interfere with the publishing process.

 When processing the Sitecore publish, the window will count through the catalog items:



When the job has completed for Sitecore, a brief report will be presented explaining the number of items that have been published, updated, deleted, etc. Items skipped are items that have not changed since the previous publish.

Please note, this message is informing you that the Sitecore specific publish has been completed. Our catalog websites are now being hosted by AWS and therefore once the Sitecore publish is complete, the item will then publish for the AWS site.

This does add additional time to the publish after the Sitecore publishing completes with the window of data as pictured above. For whole catalogs including subitems, the time can extend to an hour or two. If it is a section or an item, the time is greatly reduced and only takes a few extra minutes/seconds. If you are publishing a section or item, it is important to remember to publish the parent item of the edited item to rebuild the HTML accurately and update the published AWS pages.

Additional Notes on Publishing: 

In some cases there will be other items within the publishing queue, which can add time to your publish. In this case, you can close the wizard after clicking publish instead of waiting for it to finish. Once the publish is queued, it will be published and the job completed.

If you are publishing a catalog for the first time and have questions, you can contact Curriculum Strategy Support to initiate this process for you. Initial publishing/publishing a whole catalogs can take a little longer than making publishing updates. Please contact support@watermarkinsights.com if you have any questions.

Only items that have the "Show in navigation" checkbox checked are included/displayed within the navigation menu on the live site.  If this checkbox is unchecked, the item's title will not be readily accessible via the site's navigation menu. If you are reviewing a catalog and notice titles missing from the navigation menu, this would be the first field to inspect when troubleshooting. 

Upon request, our Support Team can provide you with an inclusion report that indicates all items within a specific catalog that are currently excluded from the navigation menu. Our Support Team can also unlock all items in the workflow for review prior to publishing by request. Please reach out to support@watermarkinsights.com to make these requests when needed.

URL will always start with domain.smartcatalogiq.com... - IF you are using any other version of URL, please update to use the one mentioned here.