SharePoint 2010 : Designing and Managing Pages and Sites for Knowledge Workers - Understanding and Using Site Variations

SharePoint 2010, unfortunately, does not do any translation, so the organization will be responsible for performing the translations of the content. The Translatable Columns link from the Site Settings page provides access to the full list of columns used in the site collection, and allows the site administrator to select columns that are “translatable” and will be flagged as requiring translation.

Note also that variations can be used only on sites that are created with one of the Publishing site templates, or on sites for where the SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure feature has been enabled. Also, it is important to point out that by default, the variations feature copies only publishing pages from the Pages library of the source variation site and does not copy content from lists or document libraries.

To test variations, follow these steps:

1.	Create a site that will serve as the variations root site that uses the Publishing Site template. In this example, a site was created and titled Variation1 under the root (full URL is http://abcsp1002/variation1). The hierarchy will be created under this site once the “labels” are defined and the Create Hierarchies process has completed.
2.	From the Site Settings page for the site collection that contains the site just created (http://abcsp1002 in this case), click the Variations link in the Site Collection Administration section.
3.	From the Variation Settings page, enter the name of the site created (in this example, /variation1) in the Variation Home field. Leave the other settings at their defaults, which in this example are the following: Automatically Create Site and Page Variations, Recreate a New Target Page When the Source Page Is Republished, Update Web Part Changes to Target Pages When Variation Source Page Update Is Propagated, Send Email Notification to Site and Page Contacts When a New Site or Page Is Created or a Page Is Updated by the Variation System, and Reference Existing Resources. Click OK.
4.	Next click the Variation Labels link from the Site Settings page, and click New Label on the toolbar.
5.	Enter English as the Label Name, and enter English as the Display Name. From the Locale drop-down menu, select English (United States).
6.	In the Source Variation section, click the box next to Set This Variation to Be the Source Variation. A warning will appear that states “After you click ‘Create Hierarchies’ on the Variations Labels page, you will be unable to change the source variation on this label.” Click OK.
7.	Select the Publishing Site template from the drop-down menu in the same section. The page should look the same as Figure 1. Click OK. Figure 1. Creating the Source Variation label.
8.	From the Variations Label page, click New Label on the toolbar, and this time enter Francais as the Label Name, and enter Francais as the Display Name. From the Locale drop-down menu, select French (France).
9.	Leave the box next to Set This Variation to Be the Source Variation unchecked and click OK.
10.	From the Variation Labels page, click the Create Hierarchies icon.
11.	A message will be provided that indicates “A Variation Hierarchy will be created” and provides the name of the job (Variations Create Hierarchies Job Definition, in this example) and the time the job will run (daily between 00:00:00 and 03:00:00). Click OK to close this message. Figure 2 shows the Variations Labels page after the job has been scheduled. Figure 2. The Variation Labels page after the Create Hierarchies job has been scheduled.
12.	Wait for the Variations Create Hierarchies Job Definition to complete, if you are patient; alternatively, visit the Central Administration site if you are less patient and want the job to execute immediately. From the Central Administration home page, click Monitoring, and then click Review Job Definitions and find the Variations Create Hierarchies Job Definition and click the link. Click Run Now from that page and the job will run.
13.	When the Variation Labels page marks the Hierarchy Is Create with Yes, the variation sites have been created.
14.	Visit the top-level site that was created to host these sites (http://abcsp1002/variation1 in this example) and check the View All Site Content page to verify that the sites were created. There should be two sites created: one titled English and one titled Francais.

To test that the variations are working, change IE’s settings as follows:

Next modify the blank page on the English version of the page by following these steps:

1.	Visit the English page (http://abcsp1002/variation1/English/Pages/Default.aspx) and click Site Actions, Edit page, and add some content to the page.
2.	To add an image, click the Click Here to Insert a Picture from SharePoint in the Page Image field, and then click the Browse button and locate an image stored in a SharePoint library. Click OK once the image is selected, and it should appear in the Page Image field.
3.	Size the image by clicking the Design tab on the Ribbon and change the horizontal size which should also change the vertical size if the Lock Aspect Ratio box is checked.
4.	Enter some text in the Page Content field. Figure 3 shows a sample. Figure 3. Editing the Default.aspx page on a Source Variation site.
5.	Click Publish from the Publish tab, enter comments if desired, and click Continue.
6.	The variations process will now replicate these changes to the Francais page once the Variations Propagate Page Job Definition job runs. By default, this is set to run hourly, so you can wait for it to run, or visit the Job Definitions page on Central Administration. To do so, click Monitoring from the Central Administration home page, click Review Job Definitions, find the Variations Propagate Page Job Definition job, and then click Run Now.
7.	After this job completes, the Francais site will reflect the changes made on the English site, as shown in Figure 4. Figure 4. A Variations page updated by the Variations Propagate Page Job definition.