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From the Experience Manager overview in the docs regarding the Session-enabled Content Service:

The Session-enabled Content Service arranges session-specific interaction with the Content Data Store: only the user who is making updates sees this content while editing; other visitors of the staging Web site see the latest content that is checked in on the Content Manager side.

Makes sense, normal visitors to an XPM-enabled staging site should only see published content.

Is the same true if there are two editors making changes to the same page at the same time (say different component presentations on that page)?

Should Editor A be prompted to "Update preview" if a change is made in the page they're looking at in XPM, by Editor B (whose on a different machine/browser)? To clarify, Editor B hasn't clicked "Finish Editing", they've simply made a change and clicked out of the component presentation, triggering XPM to save the change.

The line in the quote above - only the user who is making updates sees this content while editing - suggests Editor A should not, their session isn't affected by Editor B's session.

Is that true because my tests show it isn't (Editor A is prompted to update their preview & see's changes by Editor B shortly after they make them) and I'm not sure if that's a bug or not!

Cheers

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I've checked this on two separate Tridion Sites 8.5 implementations (a client's implementation using DD4T and our partner VM using DXA), and I'm seeing the same thing as Neil - I.e. If Editor A and Editor B are both working in XPM and Editor A updates (but doesn't check-in) a piece of content, then Editor B is shown the "The preview for this page is not up to date" message.

Similar behaviour is also shown in the last 60 seconds of the XPM installation by Alex Moody (which has the same user but with two separate sessions in different browsers): Quick Guide to installing Experience Manager (Session Preview)

Therefore, I believe that this behaviour is correct and expected and that Editor B should be notified of changes made by Editor A (that are not yet check-in), and should then see these changes on screen after clicking "Update Preview".

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So the most important part of the documentation is:

...other visitors of the staging Web site see the latest content that is checked in on the Content Manager side.

Only content that is checked in will be available to other editors, and in case that latest change is not published yet, the other users will get a message stating they should update their preview.

If you are seeing update preview messages about content which hasn't yet been checked in, that sounds like something is wrong. But before we go and classify it as a defect, I would try to track down what is happening exactly.

Since the update preview message itself is triggered when something on that published Page is updated on the CM side, and that something being:

  • a Component
  • a Component Template
  • the Page itself
  • the Page Template

The update could be anything that would give it a check-in date later than mentioned on the Page. I've seen multiple things causing this, including the XPM on the published Page being incorrect, and thus always triggering an update preview (something which can be simply checked by publishing the Page, and if it then still happens, then you need to dig in the code).

But assuming that is not the case in your situation, I would check if the changes that are made in XPM are not somehow checked in through some process etc. else it indeed sounds like something fishy is going on.

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  • Thanks Bart. So checked again - as soon as Editor B makes an edit the component is checked out to them, when they click off the field the component remains checked out to them but the "update preview" message appears in Editor A's XPM. I see no change in the check-in status of the component - it remains checked out to Editor B.
    – Neil
    Commented Mar 5, 2018 at 16:00
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    Bart - I checked on another installation and I see the same behaviour - your initial statement "Only content that is checked in will be available to other editors" doesn't appear to be true. Editor A can update their preview and receive updates that Editor B has made BUT NOT checked in.
    – Neil
    Commented Mar 6, 2018 at 9:19
  • Not sure it's related to what @Neil's seeing, but it might be worth checking if Workflow as Collaboration (introduced in SDL Web 8.5 and SDL Web Cloud) is set which allows other users to read the "dynamic" (in-progress or minor) versions of items.
    – Alvin Reyes
    Commented Mar 7, 2018 at 12:12
  • If Workflow as Collaboration is turned on, and desired for the implementation, then seeing other user changes in XPM is a good thing. This was a scenario we confirmed as part of the Workflow as Collaboration feature.
    – Alvin Reyes
    Commented Mar 7, 2018 at 12:18
  • Looks like the allowReadDynamicContent is set to false for us, this means collaborative workflow is disabled right? But its disabled on my training instance too.
    – Neil
    Commented Mar 7, 2018 at 13:14

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