Document Workflow

Default Workflow

A straightforward web publishing policy is the standard procedure. Content items are initially private and can be published directly or submitted for review

A Reviewer has two options: either publish the document, which puts it in the published state, or send it back to the author, Retract it, for further revisions (if it needs more fine tuning, etc.)

From the Quinta group Plone Workflow documentation and Plone manual

The default workflow has just 3 states and 2 roles.

A documents starts out as private. Private is the initial state when you create a content item – a page, a news item – and the content item will not be available to anonymous visitors to the site

The toolbar will show the current publication state for the content item

The owner of the document submits the document for publication, changing its state to pending review. In case he then decides to perform additional edits to this document, he can change its state by pressing retract, and he document will again be in private state

Published ≠ Public

In Plone, Published ≠ Public publication refers to workflow state, not audience visibility. Content can be published while remaining restricted to internal users

Unless the document is in a private folder, the Publish menu choice will make the content item available on the web site to anonymous visitors

The Submit for publication menu choice is used on web sites where there are content editors who must approve items for publication

After the document was submitted for publication and a Reviewer can then either send them back to the document author for re-writing (in case it require more fine tuning etc.), which moves it back to the private state, or publish the document, which leaves it in the published state

States and Transitions

State - is a set of permissions for each member's role for a given piece of content. Content is always in one of the states in the workflow

In each stage, different groups of users might have the right to view, edit, and delete an object

Transition - is a way to change state of an object, e.g. submitting an object means to change its state from Private to Pending.

The Publication state can be changed only by users whose accounts have the necessary permissions

The menu choices in the state menu will reflect existing permissions settings.

E.g. in a lab site, a technical writer could add pages to SOP documents, and the state menu will not show a Publish choice to him/her, only a Submit for publication menu choice. This is because a writer must submit articles up the line to the lab management for approval before publication

After a content item has been published, it may be retracted to private, if desired. The menu choices in the state menu will change accordingly

More Workflows

More workflows are available in the site setup for the adventurous