Improving the speed of a channel rebuild

This article explains how you can use a channel filter to make your channel rebuild faster.

Channel size and rebuild speed

The time it takes to rebuild a channel varies depending on the size of the channel. By being more specific about what is included in your channel structure, you can minimize the size of the channel and increase the speed of the rebuild. You can lessen the size of the channel structure by using a channel filter.

A common reason for a slow channel rebuild is that the structure of the channel is very large, even though everything in the channel is not needed. With this in mind, you should examine the number of entities that you are actually using in a channel, then apply a filter to exclude or include anything that is or isn't relevant.

Using a channel filter to exclude irrelevant data

One common addition to the size of a channel structure is resource entities that are not always used. You can improve the channel rebuild time by excluding anything below the resource entities in the structure hierarchy. That data would otherwise bloat the channel.

This solution can be applied to any EntityType, but we're using the resource EntityType as an example, since most users have them. 

To exclude data from a channel 

1. In Control Center, go to [Environment] > Settings.
2. Add a filter on your channel that will only include resources that have a weird or unlikely value in one of the fields. The value should be something that you know will never be used, even by accident, for example, [ChannelId];Include;Resource;ResourceFileId;-1.
3. Save the filter and close the dialog.
4. The next time you rebuild the channel, it'll be faster. This is because the channel filter will stop the rebuild when it has passed a certain point.

Further reading

What is a channel filter?

Channel structure considerations