Master sites

When creating new entities on a business module utilizing sites, the new site being created for the entity will be based on the master site of the business module. That means that the new entity site will include all the same webparts, features, lists, libraries and quick navigation layouts (and more), in the same configurations as the master site.

Master site synchronization is probably one of the most frequently used functionality related to master sites.

Imaging an existing WorkPoint solution which has been in use for some time. There is a good chance that this solution has many entities with sites on it, for example many different projects with a lot of unique data on each project site.

Now imagine you need to add a new webpart to all project sites to display some important information.

You could go to each project site and add and configure the webpart, but that would mean you would have to do this as many times as you have project sites - which potentially could be many, many times.

Master site synchronization allows you to make changes to the master site, and then synchronize those changes to all or a subset of the entity sites on the business module.

This will greatly reduce the workload of making changes to entity sites. You can read more about to perform master site synchronizations in this article.

Rule-based Master Site Synchronization allows you to synchronize specific parts of the master site of a module onto a set of entities based on field rules.

As an example a Projects business module could include a field called "Project Size" with a set of options; Small, Medium, and Large. With rule-based master site synchronization, we could set up a rule which makes the system synchronize the "External documents" library from the master site onto new projects only if the project size is "Medium" or "Large". With this setup, small projects will not include an "External documents" library.

Another use case for rule based master site synchronization could be that when creating an new project, it should be possible for the user to decide whether to have a Note list available. If this is not decided, the Note list can be added at a later point.

A third and final use case could be differentiating between what the welcome page for projects should be, based on some field, e.g. Project Size.

Overall, "Rule-based Master Site Synchronization" provides a flexible way to control and customize the synchronization of elements from the master site onto entities based on predefined rules and conditions.

You can read more about Rule-based master site synchronization in this article.