Troubleshoot and Publish a Release

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.

Catch Issues in a Release

Throughout the Enablement Site Basics, Enablement Site Configuration, Writing for an Enablement Site, 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 enablement site. Now, after your stakeholders have had a chance to review the prepared content in the release preview on your enablement site, 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.

Release page in Trailmaker Release, showing an alert for errors and warnings

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.

Issues page in Trailmaker Release, showing the errors and warnings in a release

Fix Warnings and 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 the enablement site 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 your enablement site.
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 the Release

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.

Release page in Trailmaker Release, showing that the release has no errors or warnings and is ready to publish

To publish the content, all Marisol has to do is click Publish on the release page.

Release page in Trailmaker Release, showing the Publish button

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.

Publishing confirmation screen in Trailmaker Release

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.

Download Backpacks of Published Content

Before Marisol takes a much-needed coffee break, she has one more task to complete. Throughout this module, we’ve seen that both Marisol and Cindy must import backpacks into their local Trailmaker Content workspace in order to get content ready for release.

Recall that a content creator, such as Cindy, can download backpacks of content that she’s working on in her local Trailmaker Content workspace. Then, she can submit the backpacks to her company’s version control system (VCS) so that other collaborators, such as Marisol, can find and import the content into their workspace. For a refresher on this workflow, check out the Trailmaker Content Basics module.

Backpacks downloaded from Trailmaker Content reflect the content from the content creator’s workspace, but they don’t necessarily reflect the most recent version of content that was published in a release. Other collaborators may have imported the backpacks into their workspace and made changes before publishing the content.

To get backpacks that reflect the most recent version of content that was published in a release, Marisol can download backpacks from the Released Content section of the Trailmaker Release app.

The Released Content section of the content collection page in Trailmaker Release, showing the option to download a released module’s backpack.

Marisol can check in the backpack to her company’s VCS so that other collaborators can access the most recent version of the released content. The next time a content creator wants to make updates, they can import this backpack into their Trailmaker Content workspace, and feel confident that they’re working from the most recent released version.

Together, the entire Pure Aloe team can celebrate a successful launch of their new enablement site, powered by Trailhead.

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