Move multiple pages - Status changed to: Investigating

[#1]

Request for Feature Enhancement (RFE) Summary:	It would be excellent if multiple pages under one path could be selected and moved together. Currently only one page can be selected and moved at a time. It seems like the interface and behind-the-scenes processing is already capable of most of the heavy lifting, as a page with hundreds of children can be moved; just not multiple individual pages.
Use-case:	This feature would be a huge time-saver in situations like: breaking a section of a site into multiple sections closing down a section of a site and redistributing the child pages among a few remaining sections breaking a small news or event hierarchy into a more robust by-year or by-month structure (e.g. sorting 100 articles into 2020, 2021, 2022 folders) moving lots of pages into a folder (e.g. move 100 pages under a new "archived" page)
Current/Experienced Behavior:	When selecting one page, a "Move" button appears in the toolbar. When selecting more than one, "Move" disappears.
Improved/Expected Behavior:	When selecting more than one page, "Move" should keep showing. When used, the rest of the interface for choosing the destination, reviewing and updating references will work as-is.
Environment Details (AEM version/service pack, any other specifics if applicable):	AEM 6.5 SP12
Customer-name/Organization name:	University at Buffalo
Screenshot (if applicable):
Code package (if applicable):

[#2]

Hi @Kevin_Eye 

ACS Commons - MCP - Renovator could be used to accomplish this task. It works for both Pages and Sites.

https://adobe-consulting-services.github.io/acs-aem-commons/features/mcp-tools/renovator/index.html

[#3]

Hi, @Jagadeesh_Prakash

I have been trying the Renovator, but it does not appear to work. Its log output indicates that it does not support nt:file nodes, such as an image or document directly uploaded into a component instead of the DAM. I deleted all of these in my pages (just to test -- this alone would be a show-stopper) and it still produced lots of errors and ultimately ended up deleting all of my source pages even though only a few made it to the target directory. I tried tracking down different issues and ultimately gave up.

Even if the Renovator worked, it would only be the kind of solution I could use on behalf of most of my normal authors. It would never be a self-serve tool where they could just checkmark what they wanted and reorganize at their own pace.

What are the chances AEM could be expanded with this functionality? We are all kind of shocked it's impossible to do something so basic as select a few pages and move them.

[#4]

Hi @Kevin_Eye 

In AEM - sometimes tasks require a custom tool that is typically built by a developer for a business user (which is usually a non-programmer). If this custom tool works - it should solve this issue. Please refer to below tool 

Hope below links are useful

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dhd5PpJ5-AivPSX-192L2TCHCi5ClxS9FrNV4wn3NPM/edit

Refer to similar conversation in below link

https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/adobe-experience-manager/multi-move-option-in-aem/m...

Or else if there is any other way, try to use Asset API to write a custom workflow to move the set of pages and child pages. We can customize according to our requirements. 

[#5]

Hi, @Jagadeesh_Prakash

Looks like a screenshot of someone's tool they built themselves to solve this problem (and no code), and a few other people echoing that they think it looks very useful.

I am a developer. I considered building a tool like that myself for my company before posting here. But I am asking to see if maybe Adobe is interested in filling this need for all of their users so that I can focus on things more specific to my company's use of AEM.

The idea of moving several things into or out of a folder/page/container at once seems pretty basic for any system that organizes things in a hierarchy. I think most users would be surprised to find Adobe provides no way to do this in AEM. Is it on the roadmap?

Thanks,

Kevin

[#6]

@Kevin_Eye

Agree with you, but as of now from Adobe there is no such implementation. May be available in future roadmap releases. But I recommend you to work on the custom implementation if it’s a priority and saves some time.

[#7]

@Kevin_Eye 

Thanks for proposing this idea

This has been reported to the engineering under the internal reference SITES-7827. The product team will triage this request to verify feasibility based on the prioritization model. This post will be updated according to the Jira request status.

[#8]

Thank you for investigating my idea. I look forward to hearing the results and possibly seeing this improvement added to the product.

[#9]

@Kevin_Eye, This is a valid enhancement request. Bulk copy/paste exists though, so there is a workaround. The team is reviewing this.  

[#10]

Thank you, @kautuk_sahni, for the update and for continuing to investigate this idea.

I just want to point out that copying pages is much different than moving and I would not consider it a workaround in this case. If authors file pages into folders by moving them, for example, the original links will be updated and re-published and continue to work. But if they use copy and paste, and then delete the original pages, all the old links will be broken.