Manage Last Edition Date for DITA Topic Alerts - Fluid Topics

Overview

Fluid Topics lets end-users save search queries and receive notifications when a new search result is available.

Saved search queries include filters and keywords. Fluid Topics runs saved search queries once a week and sends an email notification when content has been updated since the previous alert. Fluid Topics considers content updated when the value of the ft:lastEdition metadata is more recent than the last alert date.

Refer to Searches in the Fluid Topics documentation for more information.

Occasionally, end-users may receive a notification about a publication update while it only applies to a given topic. To prevent this from happening, some special care is necessary when configuring the ft:lastEdition metadata for DITA content.

Procedure

By default, topics inherit the metadata set at the map level. If the ft:lastEdition is set at the map level, all topics inherit that last edition date. As a result, Fluid Topics sends an alert notification for all topics in the map.

To prevent this from happening, content administrators should declare the ft:lastEdition metadata individually for each topic at the topic level.

Additionally, content administrators should not set the ft:lastEdition metadata at the map level. When the same metadata key is present at both the map level and the topic level, the value at the map level overwrites the one at the topic level.

If content does not include a last edition date, the publication date becomes the default value for the ft:lastEdition metadata.

See Types of dates in Fluid Topics for more information.

To review, the following recommendations can help avoid false notifications:

Do not add a revised metadata element at the map level.
Add a revised metadata element to all topics and set the attribute to the current date.
When updating a topic, update the attribute accordingly. It will trigger an alert for this particular topic.

Example

It is possible to set the date of last edition in DITA 1.3 by adding the revised metadata to the .ditamap file as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE map PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Map//EN" "map.dtd">
<map>
  <title>Document Title</title>
  <topicmeta>
    <critdates>
      <revised modified="2022-05-12">
    </critdates>
  </topicmeta>
  <topicref href="first_topic.dita"/>
  <topicref href="second_topic.dita"/>
  <topicref href="third_topic.dita"/>
</map>

In this case, all the topics referenced in the ditamap - first_topic.dita, second_topic.dita, and third_topic.dita - will inherit the revised date.

It is possible to set the date of last edition in DITA 1.3 by adding the revised metadata to the content to the .dita topic file as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE concept PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Concept//EN" "concept.dtd">
<concept id="concept_first_topic">
  <critdates>
    <revised modified="2022-06-21">
  </critdates>
  <title>Topic Title</title>
  <conbody>
    <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet</p>
  </conbody>
</concept>

In this case, the revised metadata applies only to this DITA file.