Application Lifecycle Management for pages

If you've Professional or Enterprise subscription, you've access to features that enable a single page to support Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) workflows.

With ALM for pages, workspace administrators can choose to enable multiple models for a page. Once you enable multiple models, you can:

• Associate additional models as potential data sources for a page
• Switch between source models from your page's associated models
• Unassociate a model from a page

These features enable you to work with your pages as part of Application Lifecycle Management.

All pages display data from a single source model. However, with Professional or Enterprise subscription, workspace administrators can associate additional models with a page via Page settings.

As a page builder, you can always change the source model for a page to any model you can access. But not all source models are equally suited to every page. As a workspace administrator, you can choose to associate those selected models with a page that are most likely to be useful.

For example, you can associate models that:

• Contain data relevant to your page
• Have a model structure that enables the data to display correctly
• Form part of an ALM workflow

Once associated, you can select an associated model to act as the source from the Switch source models drop-down list. This list enables anyone with access to two or more associated models to switch source models on the published page. Page builders can also switch source models on a draft page, and in preview. 

When you open a page with more than one model associated, the source defaults to the model selected when you last visited the page. The first time you visit a page, the page displays data from the model to which you have access that is first alphabetically.

Note: To ensure your data displays correctly, we recommend you only associate models with compatible data structures, intended for use as part of an ALM workflow.

When you have access to at least two models associated with a page, the models display in the Switch source models drop-down list. The Switch source models drop-down list displays in the toolbar of the published page, as well as in designer mode and preview.

You can select a different source model from the Switch source models drop-down list to change the data that displays on the page. This enables page builders to compare how draft pages look with source data from different models. All users with access to more than one associated model can also switch between those models to choose the data that displays on the page.

As a workspace administrator, if you no longer want to associate a model with a page, you can unassociate the model from the page.

Once you unassociate a model, it no longer displays as an associated model in the Source model tab of Page settings. It's also not available in the Switch source models drop-down list.

As long as you're a workspace administrator and have access to the model, you can associate the model with the page again at any time.

If you unassociate all but one source model from the page, you can disable multiple models for the page. ALM features for pages are disabled, but you can enable them again at any time.

Note: To remove an association between a model and a page, you need to be a workspace administrator for the model you unassociate. There also needs to be at least one other model associated with the page. The model that remains associated acts as the source model for you after you unassociate the other model.

Suppose you have a development model (Dev1) and a production model (Prod1). You can only select one to be the source model at any specific time, but you can associate both Dev1 and Prod1 with the page.

As you work on your development model you can enter designer mode for the page and select Dev1 as the source model for the draft. You can also preview the page with the data from Dev1, and you can swap back and forth between Dev1 and Prod1 to compare the two.

If you make changes to a draft so that it will work with the data from Dev1, you can save the draft and not update the published page. Users who do not have access to Dev1 still see data from Prod1 on the published page. This is useful if Dev1 has structural changes not in the production model yet, as you can change the structure of the draft page to match.

When you synchronize Dev1 with Prod1, you can publish the page changes drafted against data from the development model. The published page updates, so when the production model is selected as the source model, the synchronized data displays correctly.

Suppose you have two production models (Finance UK and Finance Japan). Both models have the same structure, but one has data for the UK, and the other has data for Japan. You can use the same development to develop and synchronize to both production models. The same is true for pages.

You can build a Finance page with a structure that matches Finance Dev, Finance UK, and Finance Japan. This enables you to publish changes to both production models at the same time and to the same page. A user with access to Finance UK can view the latest Finance UK data on the Finance page while a user with access to Finance Japan views the latest Finance Japan data on the same page.