We have a 2 step workflow - author and approve. The author applies for approval which automatically completes step 1 and then the approver reviews the page and makes it live.
This is useful as both steps have 'Notify when live' selected so the author gets emailed when the page goes live. The author also gets emailed when the page is up for review.
Unfortunately the author does not get emailed when workflow is rejected by the approver - but I see this has been logged in bug tracker as a feature request - which will be great! 
We would also like for the author (first step) to be able to enter a workflow comment to indicate to the approver what it is they have changed on the page - useful if they have just changed a small detail on a long page etc. But as the first step requires them to apply for approval on the details screen they don't have the opportunity to enter a comment on the workflow screen.
Can anyone think of a way to set this up? Or any other way to quickly indicate to the approver what about the page has changed? We're editing and approving completely via simple edit.
Thanks,
Sarah
There are a few things you could do here. The reason that the user is missing the ability to add a comment is that, i am guessing, their applying for approval actually satisfies the first step. This would happen if the first step was set up so that it only requires one user to approve and that user was in the group. You could make comments mandatory or make commenting by users outside of the workflow available. Both are options in the workflow setup.
Yep.
[quote]You could make comments mandatory or make commenting by users outside of the workflow available.[/quote]
We have selected the 'Require comments' option making them mandatory.
There is only on user in the author group so it doesn't matter if the 'At least' or 'All' option is selected. Setting 'Unlisted user commenting' to true also doesn't work.
Any other ideas?
Just out of interest how are other implementations getting around this? How do you let the author know when their page has been rejected?
I would submit this as a bug as you would expect that the user would be required to add comments, therefor the step is not satisfied by the initial apply for approval in the asset details.
[quote]There is only on user in the author group so it doesn't matter if the 'At least' or 'All' option is selected. Setting 'Unlisted user commenting' to true also doesn't work.[/quote]
I was actually meaning for the second step. i.e. the user applies for approval and misses out on the opportunity to add a comment but they can jump to the workflow screen and add a comment during the second step.
[quote]Just out of interest how are other implementations getting around this? How do you let the author know when their page has been rejected?[/quote]
While I was working at Squiz I would have implemented a trigger that listened for the status change and emailed the user. You might get a more up to date response from the current implementers.
Setting the unlisted user comenting to true for the second step didn't work either. I think because the user is already part of the workflow for step 1, they're not considered unlisted nor do they have permission to approve/reject this step.
Are unlisted users therefore just sys admins and the root user?
[quote]While I was working at Squiz I would have implemented a trigger that listened for the status change and emailed the user. You might get a more up to date response from the current implementers.[/quote]
Yeah not possible unfortunately - as per thread http://forums.matrix.squiz.net/index.php?showtopic=3483
But thanks for the suggestions Shane - I didn't even know about unlisted user commenting. Any other suggestions welcome!
Sarah