Restricted Users/Publish Workflow

Hello,

I’m just a noob in MODx and searching for a solution or a hint within a couple of hours for the following task on several MODx sites:

On a MODx installation I like to implement a kind of workflow that allow users with no publishing rights to create their content and passing it to the chief editor after finishing.
I could imagine, that ’authors’ send the editor ab automated email, e.g. if their ’Publish Document’ link will call this email function like ’Send Publishing Request’.

Is there is any likewise functionality (and I’m to blind) to find it or is it a matter of ’snipping’, or ’plugging’?

Thanks in advanced,
greetings from Germany,
iRolf

I have been planning a similar workflow but it is still in planning at this stage. We are looking at having 3 different user types (author, editor and publisher). We can then use a checkboxe TV that need to be set on completion of each stage. Then we will need a plugin to perform some logic to ’move’ the document along the production chain.

The challenge is to not allow the author to edit once the document has been submitted for approval. This had me stumped since both the author and the editor would both have the same permissions (edit and save document but not publish). the answer here is to not only have different roles but to also have different document groups for each type of user. You need this to be able to lock out specific user groups as the document moves along the chain. So the plugin would also need to set the document groups according to the production stage that the document is in.

And then build a simple manager module to allow easy monitoring of the documents that are in production.

This is the method that I came up with, but I have not worked out any of the plugin logic yet. Any other ideas?

Okay, if that one isn’t such an easy job, I need some information, if it is possible to hack the tree context menu and the page settings form according to the user level restrictions.
Due to the fact, that the menu’s selectability and even the form functionalty is obviuosly changed for author, it might be a good idea, to show a different publish item that will send a mail to a given publisher(-group). It’s not a very elegant work around, but should work for the users, I’ve to work with.

(As you already noticed -- I never have had to gear into such a snippet/chunk/plugin/whatever application, so my idea just will work for me... until the next update :-( )

Kind regards,
iRolf

Perhaps this a silly idea for this work flow question. I’ve spent all of five minutes thinking about it.

What if you use managermanager to restrict access to documents with certain templates that represent stages in the workflow. Then have the editors simply change the template to pass it on to the next stage.

Another quick-and-dirty solution. You could pretty easily set up NewsPublisher so logged-in Web Users can create unpublished pages in the right place, then let an admin review and set them to "published."

Yeah, that might work. I’ll have to prove it.
Thanks.

Things have evolved? What about today?

I'm curious about how things have gone with this also. I am using Modx Evolution (for various reasons) and it would be nice to know if any kind of workflow is available.

Quote from: kathyc at Jul 16, 2012, 08:15 AM

I'm curious about how things have gone with this also. I am using Modx Evolution (for various reasons) and it would be nice to know if any kind of workflow is available.

Just for information: still no workflow for Evo.