Writing in full documents is preferred by most authors who are not used to component-based content. And with the Sync Components feature in Dx4, this is now possible to do this in a component-based solution – without all the manual work of replicating the changes in components. You can simply use the updated full document to automate the updating of components.
But what do you do when parts of the document are reused across multiple documents?
Do you want to risk the updating of content messing with already approved content in other documents?
Of course not!
That is why the Sync Components feature comes with flexible synchronization that allows you to protect any topic in approved state from unwanted changes.
Let’s go over how to approve reused components and ensure that they are not updated when syncing components from a Compound Document.
We will start with three document models that have a few components that are reused across all documents, and some that are specific to each document.
I’m doing set of small country specific manuals for an international bank. Let’s focus on the documents for Australia, Ireland and the USA.
Let’s start out making sure that single sourced components are correct. We will have them reviewed and approved. In DxNavigator I can approve an individual component by right-click it and selecting Approve Node.
Now we are ready to create the country specific compound documents, so they can be sent out to the authors who will be updating the country specific content.
I will publish a compound document for Australia, Ireland and the USA, so it can be sent to the relevant offices in Brisbane, Dublin and Denver. I can lock the content in already approved components if preferred. But either way, when the authors return the updated country specific documents, I can ensure that none of the approved content in my component library is modified, when I sync the compound documents to automate the updating of components in the component library. All I need to do is check a box when starting the Sync Components feature. This will ensure that none of the components in the Component library that are in approved state, will be modified – regardless of what is in the Compound Document.
This way, I can safely sync the country specific compound documents without needing to worry about any of the single sourced components being at risk of unintentional changes.