Better Workflow: Approve this!
In light of us releasing our first batch of private beta invites, we thought we'd show you a bit more of what Better Workflow can do. Feast your eyes on the approval process feature!
Where we are
We spent some time last week refactoring and tidying up the code for the beta release, and we're pretty happy with it (touch wood!) as far as stability goes. In terms of functionality, this is what Better Workflow does:
- Better Workflow will let you create a draft copy of a live entry, work on it, preview it, and either publish it or submit it for approval so a publisher can then set it live.
- Better Workflow will let you preview an entry using a snazzy preview window before it goes live on the site.
- Better Workflow supports Matrix, Wygwam and Structure. There is partial support for Playa, in somuch that you can change your Playa content in a “live draft” entry, but you will not be able to preview it.
- Better Workflow, in most circumstances, will not make you change any of your templates in order to make it preview correctly.
Where we want to be
As you can see, Better Workflow does a lot, but we want it to do more. Before we release it commercially, we want to:
- Implement Playa draft previewing (Hi Brandon!)
- Implement a basic notification feature.
At the moment, if you submit an entry for approval, there is no 'specific' notification sent to users with Publish rights. All of us here agree that this is a necessary addition, although probably one that will be quite basic in its first implementation.
Into the future
After release, we'd love to improve the notification support, with more customisation on who receives notifications, custom message templates (thanks Carl!) and more. We'd also like to include support for more third-party addons, depending on the community's needs. We're really looking forward to hearing what you guys think about it, and what else you'd like to see in the future from the add-on.
Down to brass tacks, video time!
So, here's part 2 of the Better Workflow preview. If you didn't catch part one, which showed you the preview functionality, go have a read of the blog post (with video included). We're currently gathering feedback from our beta testers and considering whether we want to send out another batch of invites before we do anymore development on it. Keep your eyes peeled here and on our twitter @electriclabs. Thanks for reading!
8 comments
Paul Beardsell
Great work guys, this looks fantastic!
Give me a shout if you’re after another beta tester.
Do you have any info on a release date / price etc?
Steven Grant
Looking good guys. I haven’t had the chance to play with it yet but having just watched the video, can I suggest if a piece of content doesn’t meet the required standards that the publisher has the chance to add some notes explaining why. Those would then be seen by the editor who submitted the piece and can take steps to rectify.
Malcolm Elsworth
Many thanks for your comments.
Paul, thanks for the offer of beta testing, we may do another round so will keep you posted. We’re working to get Better Workflow out asap but haven’t settled on a price point just yet.
Steven, that’s a really nice idea and would certainly be very useful for larger organisations or ones were people work from remote locations. We’ll definitely give it some consideration for future development.
Please keep your comments coming,
Thanks, Malcolm
Tori Sheppeard
Any idea how long it might be before you are able to do a release on this? I am in desperate need of this type of system as quickly as possible.
Grid
Very very promising, can’t wait to see the notification feature and I do agree on Steven’s comment, notes would be useful.
Great work!
Steven Grant
I suppose I know how Leevi’s Publish + worked and had similar features. I don’t even think that functionality is unique to larger organisations (although they certainly have it)
GRID
Leevi’s publish was very good at the time, getting that level of detail is certainly appealing to larger companies but even to smaller to medium.
+1 for notes, but again would love to see how the notifications are handled.
Static Interactive
This is incredibly exciting functionality that EE is shockingly and sorely lacking. Can’t wait for you guys to work out the rest of your kinks… this will instantly become a default add-on for me.
Thanks for the preview and keep up the good work.