Question for guidance about how to document 'how to set a default value'

[marcemarc]

Hi Docs Team!

Hope all is well, find and dandy with you, I have a question really...

In the olden days, the olden times, we had documentation in here that explained how to extend the Umbraco Backoffice to provide a default value for a property, to save editors a bit of time when they create new things, and this was achieved by handling a much abused generic EditorModelSendingContentNotification.

Here's the page:

https://docs.umbraco.com/umbraco-cms/13.latest/reference/notifications/editormodel-notifications

Really though it shudda never lived here, because really people are looking for 'how to set a default value for a property' they arent' realllly looking for 'how do I handle a generic notification I've never heard of' - but we've documented the 'tech' rather than the 'need' - it may have even be me :-(

(although I half recall, in the old old custom documentation system we had a redirect if people searched for how to set a default value to redirect to this very notifications page)

Anyhow, now it is the future world, we don't set a default value using C# and these notifications do not exist

bye bye notification - Helllooo Property Value Presets!

The documentation for which lives here: https://docs.umbraco.com/umbraco-cms/customizing/extending-overview/extension-types/property-value-preset

But if you ask Gitbook Assistant 'How to set a default value on a Document Type property' or similar such questions it doesn't think it's possible, because we've documented 'the tech' and not 'the need'?

So I was thinking two possible things.

1. Restore the editormodel-notifications page into the Umbraco 17 docs - but have content there that explains these have been removed, and if you were looking for how to set a default value - have a look at property value presets - this would then be found by the AI?
   or
2. Just create a strongly worded page about how to set a default value that the AI assistant can found, with an example, linking to the presets page - so we are documenting the need rather than the tech
   or
3. Update the text on the current presets page, so it more strongly mentions setting default values, so it's more discoverable in that context
   or
4. Nothing, because maybe people will just find the existing page anyway!

Property Value Presets are super cool!

[sofietoft]

Thanks for raising this, @marcemarc !
I believe back in the day - probably not as long back as what you're referring to though ;) - I remember we discussed how to document these changes without keeping the old docs, but still keeping the information about what to use instead of what was removed.. (see! I can do long sentences to 😉 )

I think I prefer restoring the old article into the latest version, and then strip down the article to mention "the new way" of setting this default value.

The latest version of the article is from 14 it looks like: https://github.com/umbraco/UmbracoDocs/blob/umbraco-eol-versions/14/umbraco-cms/reference/notifications/editormodel-notifications/README.md

Either we do that, or we simply add a note to the "Property Value Presets" article and explain there, which "method" this replaces 🤔

We could also do both, and then eventually, perhaps even by version 18 or 19, remove the restored EditorModels articles again.

[marcemarc]

@sofietoft Yes, there are kind of two journeys maybe more?

1. I used to be able to use EditorModelSendingNotfications, I've upgrade from old LTS to new LTS, what's happened?
2. I'm using Umbraco fairly recently and so this ancient history is irrelevant, I don't know what I'm looking for but I want to set a default value when an editor opens a page
3. I'm an LLM bot

with 2) you could argue that's best served by a forum post, but you could see people asking the docs AI or their own personal AI and being told it's not possible.

With the code we have the concept of marking stuff as obsolete and removing it in the next version, I wonder if the equivalent is as you suggest, have the documentation page retained, with a note to say it's dead...

shall we try that as an experiment and then see how that feels?

[sofietoft]

Yeah, it's a good point about LLMs 🤔

Let's try restoring the old article and add a note with reference to the Property Value Presets stuff.
We could even hide the article in the navigation - it'll still be fully searchable to both humans and bots, just not via clicking through the nav, which I suppose no one does anyway 😅