Often you will want to make a change to data in your Knowledge Graph, but preview how it will impact your site before you officially make the update. This is where Pages Preview comes in.
Pages Preview allows you to preview "draft" content updates against your live production site. This is powered by a combination of Pages server-side rendering and the Knowledge Graph Suggestions system.
Note: This feature is not available for Classic Pages or Page Builder. Check out the Types of Pages reference doc if you're unsure what type of Pages you're using.
Terminology
- Suggestion — A Knowledge Graph feature that allows you to "suggest" a value for a field on an entity.
- Pages Preview — A page generated by Yext that contains "suggestion" data instead of the "live" entity field data. These are generated based on the production version of your GitHub template code. Synonymous with page preview.
-
Base Entity — The entity that powers a specific page.
In the example below, Entity A is the "base entity" for Page A. Page A is the "base entity page" for Entity A.
-
Entity Relationship — A feature in the Knowledge Graph that allows you to relate multiple entities together. For each page, this allows you to fetch data from related entities (in addition to the base entity) for server-side rendering. If you make a suggestion to an entity that is referenced by another page, you can preview how that suggestion will look across both pages.
In the example below, Suggestion X made to Entity A can be seen on both Page A and Page B since there is an entity relationship between Entity A and Entity B.
-
Non-Base Entity Page — A page that references a suggestion from an entity that is not the base entity the suggestion was made on, via entity relationship.
In the above example, Page B is a non-base entity page for Entity A and Suggestion X.
User Workflow
Previewing content updates can be accomplished from two areas in the UI:
- Suggestions Edit
- Entity Edit
Suggestions Edit
The Suggestions Edit workflow allows you to preview one suggestion at a time and compare it to the live production page. This is useful for quickly previewing content before approving a suggestion.
- In the navigation bar, click Knowledge Graph and then Suggestions. You will see a list of all suggested edits in your Knowledge Graph.
-
Click into a suggested edit to see a side-by-side comparison of the current field value vs. the suggested edit. Click Generate Pages Preview to generate a page preview for that suggestion.
-
Select which sites you want to preview. The Pages system will generate the preview URLs and return them to you, along with the current live production page, so you can compare the differences side-by-side.
Note: In order for your site to appear in the dropdown menu, your site must be deployed to the production environment.
Entity Edit
The Entity Edit workflow allows you to preview all requested edits for a given entity at once and compare them to the live production page.
-
Once you have requested one or more edits on an entity, click the Select Action dropdown in the top right and select Generate Pages Preview.
-
Select which sites you want to preview. The Pages system will generate the preview URLs and return them to you, along with the current live production page, so you can compare the differences side-by-side.
Note: In order for your site to appear in the dropdown menu, your site must be deployed to the production environment.
Page Preview Limitations
Site Entity
Previews for the site entity are not currently supported (refer to the Global Data reference doc for more information on the site entity).
Previewing Suggestions via Relationships
It is only possible to preview a suggestion on non-base entity pages for a single suggestion at a time. This caveat only impacts the Entity Edit workflow, from which it is possible to request a preview based on multiple suggestions:
- Single suggestion: The system returns all page previews — for the base entity and any related entity pages.
- Multiple suggestions: The system returns only one page preview for the base entity page; previews of related entity pages are not available.
Non-Base Entity Suggestions
Page Previews only include suggestions related to the base entity the preview was generated from. Previews will not include any suggestions made to other entities, even if they are base entities for the related pages returned by the system.
For example:
- Suggestion X was made to Entity A, which is the base entity for Page A.
- Suggestion Y was made to Entity B, which is the base entity for Page B.
- Page B references the field on Entity A that Suggestion X is for, making Page B a non-base entity page for Entity A and Suggestion X.
- Even though Page B is in scope for page previews generated from Entity A and Suggestion X, Page B will not include data from Suggestion Y — only suggestions made to the base entity (Entity A) are in scope.