Restore setting defaults

7 min

The behavior that exists when working with settings and default settings can be a bit tricky to understand, and may cause some unintended consequences. Read through this article to understand fully how Global Settings and Website Settings play off each other.

To start, there are three types of settings: System Settings, Global Settings, and Website Settings. However, only Global and Website settings are exposed to users via the Admin Console. The following hierarchy exists among these settings:

System Settings define the overall default values.

Global Settings inherit from the System Setting values.

Website Settings inherit from the Global Setting values.

Global Setting values can be used to override System Setting values, but only certain Website Setting values can override the Global Setting values. Review the Working with Settings article for more information. The Admin Console provides an option to reset these values at any time using the Restore default button.

Now, this can get confusing if the user is not careful when updating settings, and is compounded when multiple websites are involved. Let's walk through a couple of scenarios to help provide some clarity:

Scenario Setup

One Admin Console is being used to manage 4 different websites: Barriston, Base, Hero Tools, and Victory Distribution.

The settings for the individual websites have not been uniquely updated.

First Scenario

A user would like to deploy the Configured Commerce Mobile App for the company's various websites. To do so, the Enable Mobile App setting needs to be updated.

The following steps are used to achieve the desired outcome:

Go to Admin Console > Administration > System > Settings.

Search for "Enable Mobile App".

Verify Global Defaults is selected from the Configuring menu.

Update the setting value to display YES.

Select each website from the Configuring menu and validate that each website has inherited the Global Default value.

Expected Behavior: If the user were to go back and select Global Default and update the value to NO, then each website would also reflect this change. Because the websites were not uniquely changed, they are inheriting from the Global Default.

Second Scenario

The user has now been told that the Mobile App should not be enabled for Base. Assuming the Global Default is now set to YES, the following steps are completed by the user:

Go to Admin Console > Administration > System > Settings.

Search for "Enable Mobile App".

Select Base from the Configuring menu.

Update the setting value to display NO.

Select the other websites from the Configuring menu and to validate they each are still set to YES.

Note

Because the Base website has now been uniquely updated it will no longer inherit any changes made to the Global Defaults.

Note

Expected Behavior: If the user were to go back, select Global Defaults and change the value, each website, with the exception of Base, would also reflect this change.

Admin Console Notifications

To help users see when the setting value for a particular website has been changed, the Admin Console provides two "notifications":

When Global Defaults is selected from the Configuring menu, this icon

displays adjacent to any setting when one or more websites may not have the same value as the Global Default value.

When a specific website is selected from the Configuring menu, any setting that differs from the Global Default value provides the option to restore that value to the current Global Default value.

Additional Notes

Tooltips for these global settings are dynamic. When a specific website is selected from the Configuring menu, hovering over a tooltip displays the current Global Default value. If the Global Default value is changed, the tooltip also changes.

Looking back to the previously stated hierarchy behavior, if the Global Default value has been changed, the option to "Restore default" is presented to set it back to what the System setting value has as the default value.