More accessible last published date

[BlackHawke007]

Motivation

We are using the workflow engine of KAI to manage and publish content. Along with this, version information is created automatically during each change.
Thus, KontentAI knows what is the last real published date for a content item.

We need read-only access that real last published date. However, there is no easy way to get to it.
We have been pointed to this guidance: https://kontent.ai/learn/cheat-sheets/publishing-metadata?sl=1#a-available-solutions-with-kontent-ai
It is not suitable for our context (all the CONS outweigh the PROS).

Proposed solution

We would like to have this real published date be accessible to us via the Delivery SDK.
Option 1 (best): update the System-object with a "LastPublishedDate" value. On new creation it stays empty until the first publish action. The value is overwritten with each publish-event.
Option 2 (more performance intensive): allow us to query the timeline-history of a content item to get the last recorded published date.

Additional context

The KontentAI UI can call up the history of a content item, with this timeline-item call, example:
https://app.kontent.ai/<env_id>/content-inventory/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/b7bba1a9-8c07-4ea8-ba61-75bea4a2ddd6/content/<content item id>/timeline-item/

[pokornyd]

hello there. while I understand your issue, I'm not sure this is a feature we can provide via the SDK alone. both the solutions you propose would require a change at the API level as well, for which you'd ideally submit a feature request via Kontent.ai support channel.

in the meantime, the workarounds from the publishing metadata documentation article remain your best bet. I would say option B is the best suited for what you want to achieve and if implemented properly, could automate the whole process rather seamlessly.

you could for example create a pre-publish step, forcing your workflow to go through it by making it a sole step from which your content can be published. a webhook would fire upon moving a variant to said step, triggering your MAPI endpoint that would populate the publishing date-time element and move the item into Published state afterwards.