How would you solve this Workflow/Up for Review situation

(Steve Brown) #1

Hi,

 

We have a decentralised publishing model with our sites having any number of publishers outside the central web team.  We have one-step workflow applied so that the central web team has to approve content before it goes live.

 

We have 2 metadata fields to assist us with the review process.  

   The first is "Content Owner" - a user who wrote/owns the particular page or file.  

   The second is "review period" which is a dropdown list of time intervals - "Two weeks", "One Month", "3 months", "6 months", "1 year", "2 years" representing how often the content should be reviewed.

 

The idea was that when a page is published a trigger fires to set a future status to "Up for Review" based on the review period that is chosen.  The Content owner would get an email alerting them to the change in status and the need to review the page.

 

There is one major problem with this approach:

  Sending something to "Up for Review" status starts workflow.  The Content Owner is generally a Edit+ user with Admin permissions but they are not part of the workflow process.  So when the Content Owner gets the email they can go to the edit screen for the item but they CANT DO ANYTHING.  They cant change the status, they cant affect the workflow, they cant edit the page.  They cant do anything, even though it is them who are in the position to best know whether the content is right to be republished or if it needs changes.

 

So how can I put ball back in to the court of the content owners/decentralised publishers in the review process?  I could change the status to "Safe Edit" instead, but this seems to be a kludge - "Up for Review" seems to be exactly what I want to do.

 

Thanks,

 

Steve.

 

(Aleks Bochniak) #2

Can't you give your Content Owners admin permissions?

(Bart Banda) #3

So they can't go to the workflow screen in edit mode and cancel the workflow (up for review status) and put it back to safe edit from live?

 

Is this the same experience in admin mode if the same user is a backend user? 

 

What version of EES are you guys using? 

#4

I would set up a trigger on Edit accessed with a status of up for review possibly change it back to safe edit.

Then you could be sure that the users are not having random pages pushed to safe edit.


If the content owners think it’s all good and no changes are required can cancel the safe edit and it will return it to live.


Just a thought

(Steve Brown) #5

Hi Aleks, 

 

They already have admin permissions, but even with those permissions it seems that you cant alter status if a page is in workflow.  You have to be part of the group assigned to the workflow approval process.

 

Hi Bart,

 

1.5.0 (Edit +).  They only use the Edit+ interface so whether it works or not on the admin screen doesnt really help me.

 

Thanks "Fuzzy",

 

Not a bad idea.  However it does mean that even the items that dont require any changes will go to Safe Edit.  So I guess this is the same as just changing the status to Safe Edit rather than Up For Review - which still seems kludgey to me.

 

Steve.

#6

Yeah it does seem a bit bloaty effort wise as well. Sorry about that. I will have a bit more of a think.

(Bart Banda) #7

1.5.0 (Edit +).  They only use the Edit+ interface so whether it works or not on the admin screen doesnt really help me.

 

But it would help us determine if it needs to be looked at from an Edit+ point of view, or Matrix code workflow system point of view. I'll try and investigate this a bit more when I get some time and report back on if this was intended behaviour just for Edit+ or just a replication of Admin mode.