Possible bug: locked widgets on user dashboard "disappear" after 10.1.x upgrade

Robert Miller said:

My question: during an upgrade, is permanent hiding of locked widgets on customized user dashboard pages by design or is this a potential bug?

The locking behavior is by design, but the effect that it had on your users is not. When we render a contextual page (vs. a default page), we merge the contextual page onto the default page. This is when locked widgets are ensured to be on the contextual page and only locked widgets from the default page are forced onto the contextual page. If there are locked widgets on the contextual page that do not exist on the default page, they are now removed because the assumption is that the reason the widget would have been present is removed (the widget is no longer locked on the default page).

What is odd is that, in your user's situation, the user was able to lock the widgets at all. In the page editing experience, locking is not exposed when editing anything but the default version of the page (headers/footers are slightly different in that they also support locking contextually to apply to child themes... but the content of pages does not support contextual locking).

In short, while the end result was as designed, I'm unsure how your users got into the situation where they had locked widgets on their contextual version of the page when they never were using the default version of the page.

Your workaround, unlocking the widgets manually in the database, is what I would have suggested to alleviate the issue. Note that contextual pages that have locked widgets that are also locked on the default page are valid.

Is there anything I can do to help alleviate the issue? 

Hi Ben,

Thank you so much for explaining the underlying process. That alone is a huge help and helps us understand what is happening and why. Regarding this particular person and how they got into this situation, I don't have a clear answer, but it's possible the layout of their user dashboard page was originally exported from an employee working closely with this person who previously had access to a system admin account. The former admin did not modify the default user dashboard—we would have known and reset it—but may have exported her own modifications and imported them for this person. That's the only possibility I can think of.

Hi Ben,

Thank you so much for explaining the underlying process. That alone is a huge help and helps us understand what is happening and why. Regarding this particular person and how they got into this situation, I don't have a clear answer, but it's possible the layout of their user dashboard page was originally exported from an employee working closely with this person who previously had access to a system admin account. The former admin did not modify the default user dashboard—we would have known and reset it—but may have exported her own modifications and imported them for this person. That's the only possibility I can think of.