For any changes promoted to the site, specific expiration dates can be set on a global or asset-by-asset basis. Expiration is the only indication that the content is expired. The content is not disabled or hidden in the Staging Sandbox. Upon expiration, end users are automatically assigned the asset as a task so that they can determine whether the asset should be updated or removed from the site.
The repository checks periodically for expired items. When any expired items are found they are added to a workflow and sent to the user that last modified the asset. If multiple items are destined for the same user, they are batched up into a workflow for each website the asset belongs to.
Clicking on the task will launch the Manage Task dialog that lists all of the expired items, from here the assigned user can perform the relevant action on each item. These changes occur in isolation from the user's sandbox, thus not affecting any work that they may currently be doing in their sandbox. The workflow, however, is layered over the user's sandbox so any changes that they have made in their sandbox will be visible.
Configuration for content expiration is in one file—scheduled-jobs-context.xml. You'll find the file in the Alfresco package, that is tomcat-home/webapps/alfresco/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco /scheduled-jobs-context.xml. It contains the configuration for the frequency of expired item checks. By default it is set to check once a day at 3:30 a.m. as can be seen in the following cron expression:
<bean id="avmExpiredContentTrigger" class="org.alfresco.util.CronTriggerBean">
<property name="jobDetail">
<bean id="avmExpiredContentJobDetail" class="org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.JobDetailBean">
<property name="jobClass"> <value>org.alfresco.repo.avm.AVMExpiredContentJob</value>
</property>
<property name="jobDataAsMap">
<map>
<entry key="expiredContentProcessor">
<ref bean="avmExpiredContentProcessor" />
</entry>
</map>
</property>
</bean>
</property>
<property name="scheduler">
<ref bean="schedulerFactory" />
</property>
<!-- trigger at 3:30am each day -->
<property name="cronExpression">
<value>0 30 3 * * ?</value>
</property>
</bean>
You can make the changes for cron expression and check the expiration date functionality.
Changes can be also made directly to these files, but better practice would suggest to make changes in content-expiration-debug-context.xml.sample located at<install-alfresco>/tomcat/shared/classes/alfresco/extension/.
Rename the file to content-expiration-debug-context.xml.
Paste the previous code with changes in cron expression as suggested in the following:
<property name="cronExpression">
<value>0 3 * * * ?</value>
</property>
This will run the scheduler in every three minutes and will check for the expired item.
Submit any item and apply expiration date as mentioned in the following screenshot:
Process the workflow as explained in the previous sections.
After 14 December 2009 15:45, you will find a task in the My Task To Do dashlet as shown in the following screenshot:
Open the Manage Task dialog. The dialog displays two buttons as shown in the following screenshot. Both signal that all changes have been made and will therefore apply the changes to the user's sandbox. The bottom button, Task Done & Re-Submit All, will immediately launch the Submit dialog so that the users can submit their changes. Whereas the Task Done button will just apply the changes and users can then pick and choose when and which items to submit.
