Portal Displays Older Versions of Recently Edited Articles
THIS ARTICLE APPLIES TO:
ISSUE DESCRIPTION:
As a security practice corporations frequently use firewalls and proxy servers within their networks. Occassionally, the use of proxy caching results in users within the network seeing an older version of an article that was cached prior to a recent change in the article. When this occurs, users (who are behind the corporate firewall/proxy) may update a live article, but not see the updates when viewing the article in the portal as a customer would. Please note: customers viewing the article from the Internet or directly from within the KnowledgeBase application server will see the current edited version of the article.
ROOT CAUSE:
One common feature of a proxy server is that it caches web pages to reduce overall Internet traffic/usage. Since the proxy cache refreshes at set intervals, it will present the version of the article as it existed at the time the cache was made. Edits or updates performed afterward are not seen in the cached version.
When viewing the article from outside the proxied environment, the most recent live version of the article is shown. This is the reason that two different users can view the same article from the same site and see two different versions.
SOLUTION OR WORK AROUND:
AFFECTED SYSTEMS & USERS:
Internal Users and Administrators who work on a corporate network with a caching server.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
If you suspect this is occurring in your network and want to confirm the behavior matches this issue, please test using these steps:
- Locate an existing Live/Published article.
- Make a small but noticeable change to the article (edit the content using the "Edit" button in the KB Admin Control Panel; Article Management screen)
- Save and Check in the article.
- View the article using the "View" button in Article Management. See that the changes were made correctly.
- From within your corporate network, access the Portal in which the article appears.
- Search for the article you have just edited.
- Open it, check if the changes are displayed.
- Then, from outisde the corporate network, access the same portal.
- Open the test article you have just changed. Check if the edits are in place.
If you find that you see the changes to the article from outside the network, but not from within it: please engage your network administrator to purge and refresh the proxy cache. If you find this issue occurs frequently, ask if it would be possible to change the proxy cache scheduling to occur more often.