Content audit: Provide ability to easily identify Menu links that should be updated if a URL changes OR prevent redirects from resulting in broken links

[jilladams]

User Story or Problem Statement

As a content editor (CAIA), I want to redirect old content to new content sometimes, so that Veterans are presented with the most accurate / recent content.

As a content editor (CAIA) and as Helpdesk, I want to keep the noise of the content-broken-links channel / broken link checker to a minimum, so that it's clear when a broken link is a real veteran facing issue.

Description or Additional Context

During week of May 6, two redirects shipped that were requested by CAIA, that led to broken links in the broken links report. (We think bc the broken links report interprets redirected URLs as broken?)

1. https://dsva.slack.com/archives/C01K37HRUAH/p1715206932281009
2. https://dsva.slack.com/archives/C01K37HRUAH/p1715283758841499

This led to a discussion with CAIA, where Mikki Northuis suggested that moving forward, redirect tickets should include a content audit for uses of the old URL to be redirected, so CAIA can act quickly to update those links when redirects ship (Slack discussion).

If broken link checks shouldn't call redirects broken

The work here might be to change the broken links report so that redirects are no longer reported as broken? However: that behavior may be intentional.

If broken link checker is doing the right thing

As a content editor (CAIA), I want to know everywhere in Drupal that a specific URL is used, e.g. https://va.gov/health-care/apply/application.

CAIA would like the ability to identify where a specific URL may appear in the CMS, in any entity, in order to be able to quickly update those links after a redirect ships / before the broken link report catches them. In example 2 above, the URL https://va.gov/health-care/apply/application was used in a Menu. Because the broken link checker runs against static pages, it was hard to identify where some references to the broken link originated from.

• Content audit > Content search tool will find everything in nodes.
• Menus are not currently searchable
• Blocks are not currently searchable

Sitewide Drupal folk ideated in SLack that it's possible to make a View of Menu links that could be searched with exposed filters, or that with some custom code, Menu links could potentially be added to Content search

Steps for Implementation

Acceptance Criteria

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[jilladams]

@michelle-dooley @gracekretschmer-metrostar (cc @EWashb ) FYI that I wrote up this ticket today after discussing last week's broken link report activity with Dave Conlon, and CAIA's needs / notes. From his perspective: this isn't on fire, and is just in the backlog for awareness / consideration. If it escalates in priority, Sitewide may be able / willing to help with it, as needed, pending y'all's priorities & capacity. The ticket is a little all over the place bc I'm not sure if the broken links report is currently doing the right thing, so feel free to edit it to make more sense, or happy to answer questions if anything is unclear.

cc @FranECross

[EWashb]

I discussed this some with @RLHecht and it seems like a very easy way to get what we need would be to open up the entity usage information for more editors. Doing so would allow someone to use the content search that we already have, search for the content they need to adjust, click on the entity usage information and then see all the places where the links are/content is being used. See screenshot for what already exists at the admin level:

@gracekretschmer-metrostar this may be more about permissions to view this and opening those up rather than creating a separate view in the content audit