Add a workflow/revisioning module to Spark

How did the sprint go? :D

While this feature definitely relates to content authors, my understanding is that the Spark team's initial focus is going to be on those tools that are more broadly applicable to all content authors (inline editing, WYSIWYG, page/content layout editing, etc.) rather than just those authors with sophisticated workflow needs. Workbench et al are serving those needs well in contrib for those who need them.

Leaving as "normal" priority, however, because it definitely reflects something we'd love to get into if we have time.

FWIW, every client I've worked with in the past 4 years expected this capability to be part of the system. I'm building sites in the brochureware and brochureware+blog spaces; have built about 10 in that time. So I don't see this as a sophisticated need. It's a need wherever there's a desire for review of content that's going to be public-facing, and that's true in any organizational context I've seen so far.

We're looking into workflow for the Party module at the moment. It's a slightly different focus, but its a very common request for CRM contacts to be taken through some kind of "process" (Most recently, we had potential student being moved through a complicated application process).

Looking at other CRM systems there are a number of tools for graphically managing a companies workflow processes as shown here:

It would be good to build a workflow system that could be applied to content and crm contacts (and then any other entity). Maybe something like a "pipeline" entity that stores the position/status of another entity in a given workflow. The "pipeline" could also store who the entity/process is assigned to at the moment, how important it is and what requirments it must meet before moving on to the next status in the "pipeline".

Is this beyond the scope of spark? Is it worth doing anyway?

Here are the two images I meant to upload:

Every client I have built a site for in the last 3 years has expected at least a draft state to be available before making content live, and for that draft state to be edited multiple times on different occasions before publishing. The one-shot preview is not sufficient.

My clients are typically small businesses, not large enterprises, and tend to have no formal processes for publication in any media, but they do not expect that content is immediately live when saved, and view this as a serious shortcoming in Drupal's core experience.

#6: Thanks for sharing! Keep the feedback coming! :)

I should add that #6 applies to updating existing content, not just creating new content. If anything, it is more important that a revisioning/draft workflow is in place when updating content so that the new PA doesn't blow things away the first time she gets on the system ;-)

Related: http://drupal.org/project/ers.

For folks looking for this Drafts only, you might like http://drupal.org/project/save_draft. Thats used in Drupal Gardens.

The entity system is in such flux right now that I kind of think Spark should focus on Drupal 8 for this feature. Other solutions won't forward port well.

Thanks for chiming in, moshe!

Discussed this a bit in IRC today.

Use cases webchick brought up:

"As a release manager, I want to write a security announcement for my module, with collaboration by the security team, without it becoming public knowledge until the code is released."

"I said a really dumb thing in the announcement about some event being canceled, and need to review modifications to the text with others in the organisation, but without taking the post offline and causing a dust-up on Twitter."

"As a blogger, I want to work on my blog post for a long time in draft mode and publish it at the end."

So we want to explore how to extend or adjust http://drupal.org/node/1751606 to make it work from within edit-in-place. Plus add the "draft ahead of the published" interaction pattern.

I dug up a possible workflow scenario I drew up in the early stages of content create page redesign phase which might inspire further exploratiosn:

There is a whole lot of existing discussion on this in #1776796: Provide a better UX for creating, editing & managing draft revisions. with admin facing controls very similar to what @yoroy is proposing. I think this discussion should be continued there, if there are any core changes possible/in scope at this point. I see this issue as a contrib addendum to the core behaviour but we need to establish some core interactions first or at least places where contrib can put in stuff.

Tagging for content workflow.

This still makes sense to do, but is not a current priority. Adjusting priority accordingly.