"Publish with descendants" or "Publish with descendants (Include unpublished content items)" do not save changes

[PeterKvayt]

Which Umbraco version are you using? (Please write the exact version, example: 10.1.0)

11.3.1

Bug summary

When I do some changes in my document and then click "Publish with descendants" or "Publish with descendants (Include unpublished content items)" my changes do not saved. But if I do some changes and click "Save and publish" then all my changes will be saved.

Is this bug or feature? I mean button said "Save and publish" so it points to save changes and publish document. Buttons "Publish with descendants" or "Publish with descendants (Include unpublished content items)" said only publish. Is this right behaviour?

Specifics

No response

Steps to reproduce

1. Fresh install of umbraco 11.3.1
2. Create document type (Test) with template and allow it as root
3. Add to Test property "Foo" as Textstring
4. Create document Test with empty "Foo" property in content tab and click "Save and publish"
5. Fill "Foo" property with "bar" value and click "Save and publish"
6. Reload page and ensure changes are saved
7. Fill "Foo" property with "barbar" value and click "Publish with descendants" or "Publish with descendants (Include unpublished content items)"
8. Reload page
9. Property "Foo" has value "bar" not "barbar"

Expected result / actual result

I don't think there is a bug, but I just want to clarify this moment.

[github-actions]

Hi there @PeterKvayt!

Firstly, a big thank you for raising this issue. Every piece of feedback we receive helps us to make Umbraco better.

We really appreciate your patience while we wait for our team to have a look at this but we wanted to let you know that we see this and share with you the plan for what comes next.

• We'll assess whether this issue relates to something that has already been fixed in a later version of the release that it has been raised for.
• If it's a bug, is it related to a release that we are actively supporting or is it related to a release that's in the end-of-life or security-only phase?
• We'll replicate the issue to ensure that the problem is as described.
• We'll decide whether the behavior is an issue or if the behavior is intended.

We wish we could work with everyone directly and assess your issue immediately but we're in the fortunate position of having lots of contributions to work with and only a few humans who are able to do it. We are making progress though and in the meantime, we will keep you in the loop and let you know when we have any questions.

Thanks, from your friendly Umbraco GitHub bot 🤖 🙂

[andr317c]

Hey! 😄

Thanks a lot for posting this issue. I was able to reproduce your issue on v11.3.1 and v12.0.1. When I tried to publish a node with descendants it does not save the changes I made to the node. But If I have a node that is unpublished and I then try to publish with descendants, it saves the changes made to the node.

So something definitely seems to be wrong here.

This is worth bringing up with the team to see if we can improve it, right now we're in the middle of summer vacation season, so I'll wait with bringing it up till we're all back

[nielslyngsoe]

I think it could be a problem to change this for v.13 or older versions. User may already be used to this outcome. So I do not find it likely that we will change this for v.13.

There is thought an issue if you click "Publish with descendants" in v.14+ which informs the user that it could not find the item to Publish. Which on the other hand that makes great sense cause the item is not created and neither it has any children. In that relation the action does not make much sense.

So I think the main problem is that this action should not be visible for not yet created items. And thereby the solution would be to hide this action for not yet created items.
A fix for that comes here: #17853

Secondly it may be relevant to differentiate the Modal from the Entity Action vs. the Workspace Action. Where the Workspace Action could be made so it saves the Document. but not the highest priority currently.

We have ambitions of doing so in near future, so this will be happening one day in the future.

If anyone has perspectives on wether they like the Document to be saved as part of this Action please let us know and we will take those perspectives into considerations once we get around this topic.

Thanks in advance