DXA 1.3 Web 8 setup - minor problem with XPM

Question

I believe my question/issue revolves around the concepts discussed in this question: Tridion TopologyManager in Web8 - Relationships.

I've completed the DXA 1.3 install in Web 8 and managed to set up both a Live and Staging website that each run with their own Discovery, Content, Context, and Deployer Services. When it comes to experience manager however, I am running into some problems.

With the 1.3 install in mind, we know there are 2 Business Process Types. The DXA Staging/Live with both Staging and Live Targets, and the DXA Development (Staging Only) with, you know, only the Staging Target. When my Example Site publication is using the Staging/Live process, I successfully publish to both targets but my expected result is reversed. My Live site gets the XPM and my Staging does not. The staging flag in the _all.json binary is set to True for the live site and False for the staging site.

If I set the Business Process to DXA Development with the Staging target, the correct json flag is there and my staging site will now have XPM (although I cannot publish my Example Site to live any longer!).

I feel as though I'm on the cusp of figuring out where my connected dots are missing and the Topology Manager relationships are my current focus, but any input to get me across the finish line would be appreciated. Thanks.

EDIT: Looking at my CDTopologies, could it be the DXAStagingLive isn't consuming the two Cd environments properly? CDEnv 2 is the one for staging, CDEnv 3 is live.

"@odata.context":"http://localhost:82/ttm201501/$metadata#CdTopologies","value":[
{
  "Id":"DxaStagingOnly","ExtensionProperties":[

  ],"ScopedRepositoryKeys":[
    "DxaSiteType","DxaExampleSite"
  ],"CdTopologyTypeId":"StagingOnly","Name":"DXA Development","Description":"DXA Development","CdEnvironmentIds":[
    "CdEnvironment2"
  ]
},{
  "Id":"DxaStagingLive","ExtensionProperties":[

  ],"ScopedRepositoryKeys":[
    "DxaSiteType","DxaExampleSite"
  ],"CdTopologyTypeId":"StagingLive","Name":"DXA Staging/Live","Description":"DXA Staging/Live","CdEnvironmentIds":[
    "CdEnvironment2","CdEnvironment3"
  ]
}

Answer 1

DXA 1.3+ (or actually, SDL Web 8 in general) determines whether a CD Environment is XPM enabled or not by the presence of a Preview Service Capability in the Discovery Service of the CD Environment. For DXA, this is indeed reflected in the staging flag in _all.json.

This can't really explain what you are describing, though: I assume that the Staging environment you use for "DXA Development" is the same one as the one you use for "DXA Staging/Live", so it's not possible that the Preview Service capability is different.

You may be suffering from "environment aliasing": your Staging and Live environment's Deployer Services may be (accidentally) sharing the same temporary storage folder. In that case, they may pick up eachother's work, resulting in very confusing behavior.