I am moving my old static site to a webgui site, in the process I want to change a number of news items I have on my front page to USS items. The problem is only when submit a USS item it alway gets the current date as submission date, for my conversion I need to be able to set the date as it was on the original news item.

Any suggestions ?

Lex

From what I've seen, this is a rather painstaking task.  It's no big deal for a few files, but when you've upgraded the site and have several hundred to do, it can take many, many, many man-hours...

Anyway, my "very-unofficial" answer requires one to alter fields in three different DB tables: assetData, asset, and an asset-specific table.

Within the assetData table, locate the "title" of the asset-in-question.   Once located, get that asset's assetId.  While you're in that assetData table, change the "revisionDate" to the desired date.

Now, go to the asset table, and search for the assetId just obtained.  Once located, change that item's "creationDate" to the date you just entered into the related "revisionDate" field in the other table.

Lastly, locate the asset-specific table (e.g. FileAsset, Folder, ImageAsset, etc).  In that table, repeat the procedure just performed in the asset table.  That is, search for the assetId and then change the "revisionDate" as above.

Two things - I'm not entirely sure that this applies to your request directly, but I know that this works for changing file assets, image assets, etc.  Secondly, please note that none of the files I've had to change using these methods had several revisions - we were not using WebGUI's ability to support multiple versions/edits, etc.  I have NO idea if these techniques will work for items with several versions - or if one will need to incorporate the assetHistory table or something else.

For single-version files, as above, this technique should work provided the noted date fields match EXACTLY.  If they don't, the file links will appear on the site, but they will not work correctly when clicked.

I absolutely cannot believe that WebGUI chooses not to support changing dates through the interface.  This is an incredibly large oversight, in my humble opinion. Additionally, there is no support anywhere on the PB site or within the documentation on how to change these dates.  Apparently their advice on the matter is: "Good Luck!"

I'm wondering the same, as I need to do this too. I created an RFE for this, please vote:

http://www.plainblack.com/rfe/request-for-enhancement/be-able-to-back-date-articles-in-collaboration-system

--- (Edited on 12/12/2006 4:18 pm [GMT-0600] by elnino) ---