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erwin Evolve 2023.1.0 - General

In-Page Static Content Refresh

 

Allow Users to Refresh Static Pages in a Dynamic Site [2018.1.0+]

 

What does this mean?

As the name suggests, a Static Page is generated at a point in time, and then made available. Its content does not change. Why would you want a static page?

Sometimes a page is made static because it is a baseline, other times it is static to improve load performance, as it changes less frequently.
If the page is static for performance, it might be nice to allow a user to refresh the page themselves. So Evolve offers an In-Page refresh button.

Enabling In-page Refresh

  1. First configure the page to be static

  2. You will now be able to access the 'Allow refresh' options; "Disabled", "Everyone" or Roles. that exist in your site.

Fig. Refresh static content settings

  1. Choosing "Disabled", which is default, will ensure that no-one can refresh the page from the site.
    Choosing "Everyone", will enable the refresh button for all users of the site.
    Choosing a specific Role, will enable the refresh button for users who are members of that Role.

Each static page has a "Last generated" time stamp, to indicate when it was last refreshed. A user can then press the regenerate button and have the server make the refresh.
Once refreshed, the page will reload with the updated content. This content will be available for all users who subsequently visit the page.

Fig. Refresh static content, end user view

Help me choose an option

  • When a page is a baseline, it may be most appropriate to disable the ability for end users to refresh the content. This means the site administrator would be required to use Evolve Designer to regenerate the content when a new version is released. Often this is done with a batch run, overnight, or on another trigger. However, it may be that the page could change throughout the day, and you'd like an administrator to control when this happens. Going to Evolve Designer each time, can be time consuming, so choosing a Role that your Administrators are a member of, will ensure only they can refresh the page from within the site.

  • Perhaps the page is owned by a particular department, and they like to make changes behind the scenes, and then publish them. Again using the Role restriction will ensure only the owners can update the page.

  • In some environments the flexibility of allowing Everyone to refresh pages, is fine. If someone visits a page, and would like to see the most up-to-date details, they can tap refresh and everyone will now see the latest and greatest, when they visit.

Caveats

In 2018.1.0 this feature updates ALL object pages of the same type, and not just the page you are viewing. While this could be useful, it was not intended. We plan to reduce the scope in subsequent releases, to just the page you are viewing.
Also, it is not possible to make a page both static AND editable. So the page would need to be duplicated in Evolve Designer, with one page static, and one page dynamic. The dynamic page would be made available, only to roles who are contributors. In this way a contributor would see the page twice. If they were to edit, the editable version and save the changes, these changes would not be seen on the static page, until that page was also refreshed.
This feature is in an early adopter stage, and we welcome comments and suggestions for improvement.

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