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Set review date for pages

It’s possible to include frontmatter configuration for a page to set an expiration date for a piece of content. The expiration date is calculated using the last_reviewed_on and review_in frontmatter configuration parameters.

The show_expiry parameter in the global configuration file decides if the banners at the bottom of the page say that the page is expired or not.

For show_expiry: true, the banner at the bottom turns red if it’s past the expiration date.

If the page doesn’t need to be reviewed, we show a blue box with the last-reviewed date, when it needs review again, and the owner.

Banner that shows that page is not expired

If the page needs to be reviewed, we show a red box saying the page might not be accurate.

Banner that shows that page is expired

Setting show_expiry: false generates a blue banner with the last reviewed date. This banner stays the same whether the page needs to be reviewed or not. The banner does not mention when the page needs to be reviewed next or who the owner is.

Banner that shows that page needs review

This feature relies on JavaScript being enabled on the user’s browser to display the relevant notices.

If you want to disable the banners, but keep the review dates in the frontmatter, add the following to your global configuration file:

show_review_banner: false

The page review banner will no longer appear at the bottom of the page, but Daniel the Manual Spaniel will still notify you about expired pages.

Frontmatter configuration

last_reviewed_on and review_in

These attributes determine the date when the page needs to be reviewed next.

---
last_reviewed_on: 2018-01-18
review_in: 6 weeks
---

You can use this in combination with owner_slack or default_owner_slack to set an owner for the page.

owner_slack

The Slack username or channel of the page owner. This can be used to appoint an individual or team as responsible for keeping the page up to date.

Global configuration

owner_slack_workspace

The Slack workspace name used when linking to the Slack owner of a piece of content. If not provided, the owner of a piece of content (channel or user) won’t be linked.

owner_slack_workspace: gds

default_owner_slack

The default Slack user or channel name to show as the owner of a piece of content. Can be overridden using the owner_slack frontmatter config option.

default_owner_slack: '#owner'

Page API

The expiry date for each page is also shown in the /api/pages.json representation of all pages. This is used by the page expiry notifier to post messages to Slack when pages have expired.

This page was last reviewed on 1 July 2020. It needs to be reviewed again on 1 July 2021 by the page owner #gds-technical-writing .
This page was set to be reviewed before 1 July 2021 by the page owner #gds-technical-writing. This might mean the content is out of date.