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Workflow extension [ BETA ]


I'll start by explaining how the extension works , I won't dive into any technical details

This extension allows website administrator to define a workflow "i.e a process" of content publishing, Let's consider a scenario where the administrator runs a magazine with 3 content categories, Each one of these categories is managed by a team.


Each of these teams is formed of 5 member, each one has a defined role in the process of content creation, Let's assume we have 3 tasks  (Policy compliance review, Language review, Translation), Each of these tasks will be handled by a group of people.

In Joomla! 1.5 there's no way to group people that's why the extension won't work at its full potential under J! 1.5 , While in Joomla! 1.6 , The administrator can create groups and manage them, My extension won't handle group creation process.

Back to our example, The administrator defines the groups through Joomla's ACL Interface and creates a custom workflow for each content category , each workflow will have 4 stations ( Policy compliance review, Language Review, Translation and Final station), After saving the workflow , the Workflow extension will intercept any newly created article in the "target categories" and will inform the first station users "Policy compliance review" that there's an article awaiting review, a user from the first group "the group responsible for policy complinace review" will read and approve the article, the article will then be passed to the next station and etc...

Whenever a user logs in and access the workflows page he will be presented with pending tasks , That is, tasks that reached a station that the user oversees.

For each workflow there's an "Administrating group" , that's a group that can see all items that are going through a that workflow.

Due to the immaturity of J! 1.6 ACL system , I haven't yet implemented the "lock/unlock" functions, These functions lock articles that enter a station for all users and unlock it for users of the concerned station ,when the user moves the article forwards/backward the article becomes locked to source station and unlocked for the destination station.

Currently the extension supports com_content only , but it has the capacity to support other content types thanks to the "component plugin" concept.

 

How to install:

  1. Install the core plugin first and make sure it is enabled and published
  2. Install the main component.

How to Uninstall

  1. Uninstall the core plugin first "System - JWF"
  2. Uninstall the main component

Note that installing then uninstalling will result in deletion of all Workflow data, this is intentional for testing purposes

I recommend testing the extension under J! 1.5, It has been tested to work under 1.6 but It still needs more testing , Under J! 1.5 most functionality will be available to test.

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