Documentation Required: LIBRARIES Text component overrides - standalone text

[jswope00]

A test case exists in the ULMO Testing doc that has no documentation. Therefore, documentation is required. Here is the ULMO Test case:

Test Title:
Text component overrides - standalone text

Notes:
Text component displays the overridden content in the course

Description:

1. Open a content library with a published text component
2. Use the component in a course
3. Override the text content
4. Save changes

[sarina]

@sdaitzman could you help me out here? We're trying to match named release test cases with documentation pages. However I'm not sure what documentation to add in this case. What is the full override behavior? We need a how-to page in the documentation about what overrides do - and do you lose th eability to sync your unit if you do an override? etc

[sdaitzman]

@sarina happy to help. For Ulmo, library content reused in courses will support specific overrides.

• Overrides are allowed through the standard course editing interface. E.g. editing a text component is allowed, and creates a text content override.
• Non-supported overrides are disallowed as edits to library content. E.g. you cannot reorder a library-referenced section without unlinking it from its source library.
• When syncing content that includes some override, all non-overridden content can be synced as usual. E.g. editing one component title in a section does not remove the ability to sync in all other updates to the section, but it does generally remove the ability to sync to the latest version of that locally overridden title if a new title is published in its source library.

So:

do you lose the ability to sync your unit if you do an override?

No, there is no expected behavior in Content Libraries that should remove the ability to sync library-referenced content. (Technically, if your content only contains text components, and you override all titles and text content, you may be unable to actually sync in any new changes, since the local overrides will "win" when you accept the library version.)

A lot of the behavior is documented in Content Libraries project board specs under openedx/frontend-app-authoring#2182

• All titles support overrides: Course Outline/Unit Views: Allow overriding names of all library-sourced content frontend-app-authoring#2183
• Text components support text content overrides: Course Unit View: Allow edits to Text components in library-sourced Units/Subsections/Section frontend-app-authoring#2174
  • Child text overrides are supported (i.e. you can override text content within a library-referenced section/subsection/unit)
  • Standalone text overrides are supported. When syncing at this level, users can choose whether to "keep course content" or "update to published library content." This is the only case in Ulmo where users can choose whether to keep/drop an override within a sync. This may be expanded in a future release.
• Tag handling is a special case to support content alignment: Reuse tag behavior frontend-app-authoring#2234

[sarina]

@sdaitzman thanks. This is kind of a lot of information to be absorbed. Do you know if it's being planned to write documentation for this behavior?

[sdaitzman]

@sarina definitely makes sense. I don't know of a current plan to write user-facing documentation about publish/sync behavior, but will follow up on that. It has come up a few times as a request, including when I shared Content Libraries product updates at the Educators WG.

I'll bring it up this week at the content libraries delivery team sync (CC @jmakowski1123 @edschema)

[sarina]

Can you invite me to the sync this week? I may be able to help with documentation if I understand things better.