Modernization: Metadata: Option to preserve created and modified dates

[pkbullock]

Category

[ ] Bug
[X] Enhancement

Problem Area

[ ] Page Transformation: Error during the setup/use of the Page Transformation UI solution (did you check our troubleshooting guide?)
[X] Page Transformation: Error during the use of page transformation from PnP PowerShell
[ ] Page Transformation: Error during the use of page transformation from .Net
[ ] Page Transformation: Page is not looking correct after transformation
[ ] Modernization Scanner: something went wrong...

Expected or Desired Behavior

I would like the option to preserve the created/modified dates where possible.

Observed Behavior

The modernisation doesn't do this, including using the CopyPageMetadata switch.
I have seen documentation for PnP-PowerShell that this is an option: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/sharepoint-pnp/add-pnpfile?view=sharepoint-ps so its possible to acheive.

[jansenbe]

Good feedback @pkbullock. I assume if you want to retain the modification/creation date you also want to retain the user who created/modified the page? To stay backward compatible I see this behavior is triggered by a custom flag.

[pkbullock]

Include who but if not resolved then fall back to System Account (think I have code somewhere to get this) - ideally not my name. Make sense for custom flag, there maybe cases where others may not need this preserved.

[eduardpaul]

I'm currently testing the same thing and you can archive it creating a custom page layout file with the following mapping:

<MetaData>
...
<Field Name="Created" TargetFieldName="Created" Functions="" />
<Field Name="Modified" TargetFieldName="Modified" Functions="" />
<Field Name="Author" TargetFieldName="Author" Functions="" />
<Field Name="Editor" TargetFieldName="Editor" Functions="" /> 
...
</MetaData>

With this in place, you need to run the transformation and all fields will retain their value:

ConvertTo-PnPClientSidePage ... -PageLayoutMapping "C:\...\custompagelayoutmapping.xml" -CopyPageMetadata

[pkbullock]

@eduardpaul thanks for sharing this, working like a charm! This might be a good one to record as sample or put in FAQ in docs.

[pkbullock]

So bit more testing revealed that when publishing the date is updated after publish then remains in draft state.

[eduardpaul]

Hi @pkbullock I think you need to update the first published date field in order to publish a modern page:

<Field Name="PublishingStartDate" TargetFieldName="FirstPublishedDate" Functions="" />

And use this if you want to promote the page to News:

<Field Name="ID" TargetFieldName="PromotedState" Functions="StaticString('2')" />

Hope it helps :)

[jansenbe]

Nice way of using the publishing layout templates @eduardpaul :-) Would be indeed a good one to document.

@eduardpaul : do you need a native "promote as news" option? I initially assumed content authors would first want to verify the pages before actually promoting them as news...the PnP Client Side Page API does support this, so it would be a fairly trivial change.

[jansenbe]

Just checked the code in the Client Side Pages API and we always set the FirstPublishedDate to now...so think it's better to keep @eduardpaul 's approach for now. Will include that in the docs, closing this issue now.