Editing an event that has "Unpublish on Specific Date" value clears the unpublish date and time

How to reproduce:

1. Create a new event
2. Set an "Event Start" to a specific date and time such as: 05/05/2012 19:30
3. Set an "Event end" to a specific date and time such as: 05/05/2012 22:00
4. Click the "More Actions" and select "Publish/Unpublish on Specific Date"
5. Leave the "Publication date" on the default value
6. Change the "Unpublish on" value to a specific date and time such as: 05/12/2012 00:00
7. Click "Done" and "Save"

Note that the event list shows now shows "Published, scheduled unpublish on 12/05/12 at 00:00" for this item (see create_event.png).  As an aside, note that the date format is incorrect for my locale (should be 05/12/2012).  As another aside, also note that the time formatting is incorrect for my locale--times are shown in 24hr format (should be AM/PM).

Now, click the newly added item and make a simple edit to the event text and click the "Publish" button.

Note that the event list shows now shows "Published" and that the unpublish date and time have been wiped out (see edit_event.png).

--Steve

Hi,

Thanks for contacting us. According to the format problem you are reporting, there is an open pits issue, you can vote for it here: http://www.telerik.com/support/pits.aspx#/public/sitefinity/7317.

Regarding the next issue - by design if  one scheduled item is edited and saved again, the value set for publish/unpublish on specific date gets cleared. We had several discussions on this with our UX team whether this value should be cleared or not and this was their final decision. I will forward this trhead to them and will reconsider the behaviour once again as it is obviously not what you expected.

I hope this helps. Please, let us know if you have further questions.

Greetings,
Antoaneta
the Telerik team

Hi Antoaneta,

Thanks for the quick response.  From my standpoint there are are several problems with SF silently clearing the "Unpublish on a Specific Date" value:

1. if I'm editing the item and no longer want to unpublish it, I would make that particular change while editting the item

2. The likely purpose of the edit is to fix a typo or wording issue and it's not uncommon that more than one edit needs to be made to the item.  Having to reset the unpublish value after each edit makes little sense.

3. Silently removing the unpublish value is neither apparent nor intuitive.  A button or link in the editor that clears the unpublish value would make much more sense.

Thanks -- Steve

Hi Steve,

Thank you for the detailed feedback. I have already logged a task for our UX team to prepare the necessary improvements in this logic. This problem will be fixed and available in some of our next major releases.
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All the best,
Antoaneta
the Telerik team

Antoaneta - has this issue been resolved?  I'm migrating content from an old website and need to maintain the original publish dates in the past.  In regards to the decisions made by the UX team, the "modified" date should be silently updated but never the "published" date as you describe.  This is a serious oversight and should have been resolved years ago. 

Hello,

As far as I understand you would like to set the publication dates of content items to dates in the past. If so, please refer to the below KB article for more details on how to do this from the backend UI and using the API:

http://www.sitefinity.com/developer-network/knowledge-base/details/how-to-publish-content-items-in-the-past

Regards,
Sabrie Nedzhip
Telerik