Chapter 17. Using Instruction Files

One of the most frequent problems faced in a running Documentum is changes made to templates. At any given point of time, there is a certain amount of content created from a template file. If, owing to some business needs, the structure of this template file needs to change, what happens to the existing content that has already been made using the older version of the template?

Would the template still function well? Would the new template structure be reflected automatically in the existing content? Would you have to re-create all the existing content all over again so it conforms to the updated template structure?

Extremely pertinent questions—the short answer is: No! Documentum developers anticipated such situations and have included Instruction Files in Web Publisher to help you update the structure of existing content as per the updated template file.

Let's consider a small example.

Imagine a template file that content creators use to create a Frequently...