Troubleshoot and Publish myTrailhead Content
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Describe where you can check release health in Trailmaker Release.
- Explain the difference between an error and a warning in Trailmaker Release.
- Describe how to publish content with Trailmaker Release.
The Issues Page in Trailmaker Release
Throughout the myTrailhead Basics, myTrailhead Configuration, Writing for myTrailhead, and Trailmaker Content Basics modules and the units of this module, we’ve explored how content creators and release managers collaborate to plan, create, and prepare content for your company’s myTrailhead subdomain. Now, after your stakeholders have had a chance to review the prepared content in preview mode on your myTrailhead subdomain, a release manager makes sure that the content is ready to be published.
Depending on the size of your company, you might have multiple roles contributing content to a release, including modules, badge art, images, and localized content. With all this collaboration going on, it’s no surprise that sometimes issues can pop up in your content as it’s getting ready to be published. Maybe a trail is missing a referenced module, or maybe a unit is missing a quiz, or maybe an image is missing accessibility attributes. Fortunately, a release manager, like Marisol, has a tool to monitor these types of issues and make sure they get resolved before a release is published.
In Trailmaker Release, the release page shows a warning icon and a red banner when the release contains any warnings or errors.
When Marisol clicks the View Errors and Warnings link in the red banner, she’s navigated to the release issues page. This page separates the issues into two sections: issues related to the release and issues related to the content.
Warnings Versus Errors
A warning is an issue that affects how learners experience your content. To provide your learners with the best experience, you probably want content creators to fix these issues, but Trailmaker doesn’t prevent you from publishing anyway. Some examples of warnings are:
- A module contains an image that myTrailhead can’t access, because the image is behind a firewall.
- A unit contains HTML coding that Trailmaker Content doesn’t support, which makes the content formatting look odd on myTrailhead.
- An image is missing alt text, so digital screen readers can’t describe the image to visually impaired users.
Marisol’s release has one warning: A module, Pure Aloe Sales Goals, contains a unit with invalid HTML because one of its images is missing alt text for accessibility.
An error is an issue that affects the technical requirements for publishing content, and Trailmaker prevents you from publishing the release. Some examples of errors are:
- A module or trail is on the release list, but the content’s backpack hasn’t been added to the release.
- An API name on the release list is already in use for a different piece of content.
Marisol’s release has one error: The Sell Well at Pure Aloe trail that’s included in the release hasn’t been uploaded. This means that the trail’s manifest item was added to the release, but the trail’s backpack hasn’t been added to the release from Trailmaker Content.
Here’s another secret: Trailmaker Content catches a lot of issues before Trailmaker Release reports them. For example, if Marisol adds a module to a release but forgets to include badge art or a quiz, Trailmaker Content shows a window to let her know that those artifacts are missing.
With these helpful tools, Marisol can identify and resolve potentially problematic issues in content before publication.
Publish Content
When a release no longer reports any errors or warnings, the release page shows a blue banner, which indicates that the release is ready to be published.
To publish the content, all Marisol has to do is click Publish on the release page.
Trailmaker then shows a confirmation window, where Marisol has one final chance to cancel or move forward with publication. The confirmation window lists the number of items being processed in the release, and confirms that no errors or warnings remain.
That’s it! With two clicks, Marisol has finally published the latest release in the Sales team’s content collection. Learners in the Sales team at Pure Aloe can now access all the new content that Cindy and company have worked so hard to create and maintain. They’ve delivered an engaging, personalized enablement experience for Pure Aloe teams, and followed in the tireless spirit of Joseph, their trusty Salesforce admin, who definitely earned a vacation after all his work to set up the subdomain and its users. Together, the entire Pure Aloe team can celebrate a successful launch of their new learning platform, powered by Trailhead.
