Broken Ancestors - Generating Preview Failed

A ‘broken ancestors’ warning typically arises when a content source (space or Scroll Documents) contains one or more page(s) that are nested below a Confluence ‘folder’ or some other unsupported content type or unavailable page.

Symptom

Any attempt of a site preview generation fails with one or more warnings of the type ‘Broken ancestor’. As a result, you can’t proceed to update your site.

Explanation

A ‘broken ancestors’ warning typically arises when a content source (space or Scroll Documents) contain one or more page(s) that are nested below either

• a Confluence folder

• a Confluence database

• a Confluence whiteboard

• a Confluence page that is not available anymore

Confluence folders, databases or whiteboards are not supported in Viewport - only normal pages. Viewport will typically ignore these content types and successfully complete the site generation regardless of their presence in a space or Scroll Document. However, when a normal page is nested below one of these content types, the site generation will always fail because Viewport will attempt to fetch the page.

A very rare occurrence of this error is due to one or more pages being nested below a normal Confluence page that is not available anymore. This is usually the result of broken content after a Cloud migration.

Resolution

You have two options to fix the error

• Replace any folder, database and whiteboards that nests normal pages below them with normal parent pages

• Move the folder, database or whiteboard within your content source so that no normal pages are nested below them

The preview should now generate without the error.

If you are sure that your content source doesn’t contain any folder, database and whiteboards, please contact help@k15t.com. We will help you investigate if your problem stems from otherwise broken content.