Workflow

A common requirement is to execute actions based on passage of time. Can I have some input on how you slick Drupal people out there have attacked this issue?

An example. Let's say you have the stereotypical workflow of create -> approve -> publish. If the approver doesn't approve or disapprove within 1 week of node creation, an email reminder is to be sent to the approver.

What's the most elegant way to trigger the email?

This page will be updated, so you can track the development status here.

Improvements in comparison to workflow-ng:

Data Types:
Arguments had an "entity type" in workflow-ng. This has been changed to data types, so that it fits also for primitive data types like strings and numbers. So rules contains support for the usual data types like node and user, but in contrast to workflow-ng it also treats strings as data types.
Also a lot of internal code has been restructured and improved - now rules is keeping an internal array of variables.
Status: implemented

Hi,

Im creating a site using Drupal 6.2.
I need to integrate the workflow module with this.

the funtionalities i need are

1. users will submit cases (page with details along with attachments (video, pdf, doc etc))
2. this will go to the reviewer, who reviews this,
   if rejected to notify the submitter with reasons
3. If accepted, it should go to approvers, after accepting the case gets submitted.

Do we any inbuilt module in Drupal to do this functions (like workflow in Drupal 5) in Drupal 6 or is there any other way of doing this in Drupal 6.2

Thanks
Sumesh

I've added a new event to a module that I'm working on, but I would like to also be able to return a string. Is there a entity type that would allow me to do this. Ideally I would like to pass a string as an argument to the workflow_ng_invoke_event function and access the string's value as a token.

If this doesn't exists, any pointers on how I might write the code to do this.

I posted this over the the support area of workflow, but I also wanted to post this over here too.

http://drupal.org/node/257258

I don't know if I am missing something or what, but when had version 5x-1.x installed, the actions to publish and unpublish nodes as well as a group of others were listed as actions in the actions area of workflow. I wanted to automatically publish/unpublish nodes when it changed workflow states. Everything is there, and works correctly. But on 5.x-2 they are not an option.

Hey folks.

Here is a custom solution we developed for Amnesty International which is now released to contrib!

Advanced workflow for drupal

Hi I have installed workflow-ng on drupal 5.7 and I can't figure out how to allow users to change a state. I have created a state machine with 2 states and connected them with a specific content type. when I either edit or view that content type I cant see any way to change the state of the content? I have read the documentation but it doesnt talk about the state machine.

Once I get the state machine working I will fire an email if the state is changed to a certain "finished" state so that I can then view the node.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi folks

I'm a newbie to this module and need a little help please :)

After a fresh install of Drupal 5.7, I added and enabled the latest Token and Workflow-ng modules only. The token substitutions fail right "out of the box". For example, if I activate the sample rule called Print the content title of pages and stories and at the top of nodes, it prints:

Workflow-ng example: The title of this post is [node:title].

If I create ANY rules with token replacement, they aren't replaced. I've tried:

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I have a nodeprofile field type that can be for example "group 1", "group 2", or "group 3".
Every time a new user registers, I want different emails to be sent to different users based on this type field.
I add a new rule configuration and I choose the "User has registered" event.
The problem is that when I try to add a condition, the only relative thing I can choose from there is
"User has nodeprofile". How can I access my type nodeprofile field???
I have tried the "Textual comparison" too but I had no luck.
What should I do?
Help! I really need to finish this!

So I have a CCK form for a "problem submission" form. The authenticated user pulls up the form, fills out the fields displayed (field permissions hides fields that the office fills out) and hits submit. Then the office can go in and make changes, add information and update the "progress" (workflow) of the problem. Anytime the status changes ('submitted', in progress', 'oh hold', 'completed' etc.) I have the Actions module send an email to the author. Everything is working fine, but I would like to extend it in one way, and this is what I need help with:

In my website i have 2 flow flow already, when i create a new work flow and sign the node type into the new work flow, all the old content page of this type show errors in the work flow part. It seems like that the old content still link to the old work flow and the new work flow can only work well in the new content. I don't want to delete all the related content in work flow transfer and create the new ones, does any one could help me?

Hi group....I've run out of ideas to search for, so I'm hoping any of you might be able to help.

I have set up a workflow for a CCK node type with only two states: "Requested" and "Read". Workflow NG provides email notifications beautifully. I am trying to hide one of the CCK fields in the node creation step using the Workflow_fields module.

I have set up the permissions on the Workflow_fields module to show the field in question only during the "Read" state, but not on the "Requested" state.

Hey guys,

So I need to extend workflow slightly, I've got to create a field which will give the estimated amount of time that a content type should stay in a particular state. Is the best way to do this to patch workflow or create another module?

--

Hello,

I am currently working on a project where the same workflow is involved at several levels. More specifically, there are two interrelated roles: Authors and Validators. The trick is that a Validator at level N can also be an Author at level N+1. The number of levels is undefined (typically between 2 and 10).

Hello everyone,

The system we currently use at our office is currently built upon the casetracker module. However, the challenge we are encountering is enforcing a "workflow" on those nodes in our system. It would be great to be able to integrate casetracker with workflow so that changes are detected and that changes to the those fields are acted upon and processed.

I'm trying to use Workflow-ng to set up the following scenario:

A node can have one of three states:

1. Draft
2. Needs Review
3. Published

There are two types of authenticated users:

1. Editor
2. Publisher

The Editor role can create nodes and also edit nodes. The Editor can change the state of a node from Draft to Needs Review but cannot set it to Published. The Editor can no longer edit the node once it has been set to the Needs Review state.

The Publisher role can create, edit and set the node state to published. Once the node is set to Published the Editor role can no longer edit the node. The Publisher can also set the node state back to Needs Review or Draft.

Putting it here, for people to comments and review.

> Hi,
> Please review this tutorial, I hope it's better, implementation-wise, then
> last one :)
> http://drupal.org/node/203377

Yep, that sounds like a cool use case.

I'd suggest that we write the tutorial, so that the nodes always keep
visible for everyone. For that we need content access and set it to
allow anonymous + authenticated users to allow view access.

-> Probably you have that already, but I can't find your figure 1?

I don't seem to be able to schedule more than one change of state in a workflow for a node -- or at least, as there's no list of thee change I've scheduled, I have no way of knowing if adding a second scheduled change works or overrides the first one.
Is this possible?

What I'm trying to do is create a news story list on the front page of my site using a node queue. I have three states in my workflow: Pending, Current, and Expired. When in the Current state, the node is in the queue and removed when it goes to Expired.

I've been using Drupal for a few months now, but have only recently tested the workflow module on one of my sites (for submitting creative writing). I started with workflow-ng, and loved the functionality, but prefer the simplicity of the linear workflow in the "workflow" module.

Hello, I am wondering if Workflow-ng can do this:

• A user creates a node
• Upon node creation, the user's role is changed

Stated differently, can Workflow-ng change the role of a user after they create a node?

I'm guessing it's possible, but I'm not sure how.

Thanks,

Jim

Hello everyone. I have been playing around with the SMS framework and email gateway and I think its great! I'd like to throw a bounty out for someone to create an action that send an SMS to a user i.e the author if they have entered their sms information on their account profile.

I don't have much, but I'd love to see this module go SMS via actions! : )

The scenario: the project calls for 30 individual reports generated by different writers (some of the writers will generate only one report whilst others will be responsible for more than one). These reports are to be uploaded to the site from where they will be downloaded by a handful of reviewers, each reviewer being responsible for a specific set of reports. Reviews will be uploaded as documents which will in turn be downloaded by the writer and so on and so forth.

I'm looking for some feedback. I'm using the workflow module and generally find it very good. Very easy to setup and can be extended to do quite a bit. The only thing it seems to be lacking that I keep finding myself needing and having to work around, is parallel paths. Does any one have any ideas on how to accomplish this? I am a fairly adept programmer and may be able to devote a little bit of time to this, but looking for some input to see if anyone else out there has this need or has any ideas on how to accomplish this?

I'm looking to create a site where an administrator can post a file with a list of questions (Actually a file with protein/ligand smiles strings for you chemistry geeks out there). Then I'm looking to let a user post a file of answers (Again for the chemistry geeks: pose prediction, affinity estimation, etc). When they post their answers, it'll give them access to yet another questions file with which they can post their answers file.

Once they post an answers file, the questions file should be marked as answered and there may be one or more question files unlocked as a result.

I have two states in my workflow: Submitted and Published.

I want to restrict anonymous user to submitting to the Submitted state. (done.)

I want logged-in users to automatically post to the Published state. (almost there)

In the creation section of the workflow grid, I've set:
- Submitted: Author, anonymous user
- Published: authenticated user, Content Admin, Site Admin

There is no overlap between user roles in that workflow setup. However, when an authenticated user creates some new content, he is given the choice of Submitted or Published.

I don't even have to get rid of the "Submitted" option, if I can set the "Published" option to be selected by default for authenticated users.

any tips?

thanks in advance!

Hello, we're working on a site at http://www.mngreenroofs.org/ and they are looking for a certain feature for their blog:

They want something that automatically publishes the latest blog entry to their front page, and unpublishes the previous latest entry from the front page (but it still stays published in the blogs area).

I'm guessing the basic answer would be something like:

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I have content types provided, that automatically eight weeks after publishing should be deleted or unpublished. Is that possible with the workflow ng module? Or have you any other solution for me?

kind regards
drew29

Finally the first stable release of workflow-ng is out!

The module is already stable for a long time and all important features are implemented, so I decided it's time to release. So I'm happy to have a stable 1.0 release out of the door close before the drupalcon in barcelona. If you are going to barcelona, don't miss the session about workflow-ng.

Links:
project page
documentation

I am attempting to set up a node type that has 4 workflow states associated to it. What I would like to do is include links or linked images images and via the link, can be clicked on to change that node to that state. The idea is to keep users from having to click workflow and then change the state. These states will not change, so I don't mind hardcoding links into the node template and using node id as a dynamic variable in the url. Is this possible? I think that this would be a great usability enhancement to Workflows aswell. thanks in advance. Jimmy

Hi,
I'm looking for a way to add multiple workflows on the same node type. Its for some CRM system (among the rest) that has a few logical workflows within, all on users of the system. We contemplated on using node profile as the node type with multiple workflows defined on it, but, that's not possible as in the current workflow module implementation each content type can be associated with one workflow . Any suggestions?

I'm following the "classic" example here with 3 states:
- Draft
- Review
- Publish

Only the editor/moderator can publish a node. So, user only has access to Draft and Review states.

Hi

I am a recent entrant in to the world of Drupal and have so far been very impressed indeed.
I am having problems understanding how to implement workflow in version 5.1x of drupal.
The workflow I want to do is:

1.author creates content and sends for approval
2. notiification email sent to admin
3. admin publishes content
4. content visible live on site

I have read various postings and have watched the lullabot workflow video but am coming up against a very big brick wall at the minute in terms of me grasping how this is done.

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Hi

I am a recent entrant in to the world of Drupal and have so far been very impressed indeed.
I am having problems understanding how to implement workflow in version 5.1x of drupal.
The workflow I want to do is:

1.author creates content and sends for approval
2. notiification email sent to admin
3. admin publishes content
4. content visible live on site

I have read various postings and have watched the lullabot workflow video but am coming up against a very big brick wall at the minute in terms of me grasping how this is done.

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

I'm actually creating a special content type with the cck module. Th problem thereby is that I want to have the discussion to the content not in form of comments but in form of a forum topic. This should be generated for every content of this type by default.

I thought an action maybe in combination with a workflow could help solving this problem fast. I'm not good at php so I'm asking here if this is possible and on how to create such an action.

We are attempting to set up a workflow action for people to apply for a directory listing on a website. Editors should be notified that a submission has been received, so they will be able to review it. The eventual process will hopefully be something like this:

1. An anonymous user fills out the CCK fields set up for Directory Listing content.
2. Upon clicking "submit", an e-mail is sent out to site editor(s).
3. The content goes into an unpublished "For Review" state.
4. Editors review it and go from there....

This little module produces graph diagrams out of workflows, useful for documentation purposes.

It currently generates two distinct kinds of graphs:
* One for the workflow definition, showing all workflow states, the
transitions linking them, and the roles allowed to perform those
transitions.
* One for a workflow instance history, i.e. the path that a workflow
took for a specific node. Here, the graph shows all state transitions
that occurred on the node, including the timestamp and the users who
performed those transitions.

It's pretty raw for the time being, especially when it comes to controlling the generated graph. Enthusiasts are welcome!

Check it out: http://drupal.org/project/workflow_graph

I'd like to be able to submit a post, have members vote on it, and then if the score is high enough, it gets published publicly. Is that possible? Perhaps if I posted a private group post, it could be changed to public with og_audience?. Should I be looking at the action module instead?

I'm happy to announce the 1.0 beta1 release of workflow-ng.

Workflow-ng allows one to customize drupal's built in workflows in a very flexible way.
In short, it's a rule-based event driven action evaluation system. Read the introduction to see how it works.

It is useful for

• sending customized mails notifying your users about important changes
• building flexible content publishing workflows
• creating custom redirections
• and a lot more....

Hi
I am new to Drupal and have to customise the site

Need to know:

1. when a user replies or post new node, how is his/her picture is reflected in the replies/comments etc....
   I have to do this customisation.

Please do reply back, How do i customise this?

Regds
Vinod

Vinod,
try enabling pictures in user settings (admin/user/settings) then enable pictures in your theme (admin/build/themes/settings/bluemarine).
I hope this helps
William
wpoehner

Hi Vinod,

After some hard work, the workflow-ng API is ready.

It features

• actions, which may be configurable
• conditions, which may also be configurable
• support for multiple arguments, for actions as well as for conditions
• condition evaluation with logical operations like OR, AND and NOR
• events, for which conditions and actions can be configured. They may be contributed by modules.
• dynamic loading of needed arguments
• ordered conditions and actions - they are evaluated like they are ordered
• form API style configuration and processing of conditions and actions

So workflow-ng works event based. (And no, I'm not talking of calendars ;)
E.g. workflow-ng defines some basic events for drupal core, like 'node update, 'node insert', 'user update' and so on. So this are the events you can react on by defining conditions and actions for them.
What makes workflow-ng powerful is, is it's flexible handling of arguments. Each of these events has to define a list of available arguments. Then any conditions and actions, that can work with these arguments, can be configured for this event. So an action can be used in any situation, where the suitable arguments are available. There is no need for the action, to be coded aware of every event.. :)

As modules may define further events, this enables module authors, to easily allow site administrators to customize the behavior by just defining some further events.

Read more at http://more.zites.net/workflow-ng-api-ready

Hi

Could anybody, please, tell if workflow module can be used for doing/checking things periodically and making a state transition basing on the check results?

I really want to make use of the workflow module just released for 5.x but must have the capability of triggering a state change based on some simple field matching criteria.

On Cron Run:
* foreach (condition) { if (condition.true) { execute state change; break; } }

I noticed a small _cron() method that is already doing state transitions based on pure schedule. I guess my main question here is what is the best way to approach this? Is someone working on something similar that I could help out with? Should I just code it up and submit it to the group for review?

Find more detail in the release notes.

Big thanks to everyone who downloaded and tested the beta release.

I'm happy to announce that I start working on the next generation workflow module, called workflow-ng.
It's inspired by the existing workflow module, but if things go well it's going to be a lot more powerful.

I can use the development as practical work for my study and I will also write my bachelor thesis about this - thanks to the Information & Software Engineering Group of the TU vienna. Furthermore it's great that this all is sponsored by the Austrian company Pro.Karriere!

So, what's workflow-ng?

Workflow-ng ist the next generation module package for building workflows with Drupal. It allows building configurable state machines, which can be supplied programmatically or through the admin interface. So workflow-ng will be a tool for module developers as well as for site admins.
Workflow-ng doesn't work only for content nodes, it will be coded on top of a “drupal entity” - so it will start with support for nodes, comments and users. Furthermore it doesn't urge you to introduce new states for your entities,because it does interpret each saved entity as a new possible state. This allows one to reuse existing information, e.g. reuse the existing „published“ and „moderated“ fields of nodes.
Also workflow-ng won't allow one building state-machines only. One will also be able to react on various “events” with configurable actions, which allows site-admins or modules to adapt any default behaviour. E.g. this suits very well for e-mail notifications. Send a thank you message to the author of a certain node type? Just configure the action and workflow-ng will do it for you.

Read more about it in the concept I wrote: link

Hello. I'm brand new to Drupal and the workflow module, and I'm having a little difficulty configuring it to fit my needs. Can someone point me in the right direction? Here is a quick summary of what I'm trying to do:

Workflow is in beta for 5.x!

Well, crack open the champagne and put your party hats on. After hours of hard work by drewish, webchick, samo, moshe, bloomaniac, jvandyk, Egon Bianchet, unleached, mr. dale, bdragon, and myself, workflow is running on Drupal 5. Special thanks to all those listed above who took the time to patch, review, critique, and otherwise move the ball towards the endzone.

I've implemented the per-field settings functionality in a separate module called workflow_fields at http://drupal.org/project/workflow_fields.

The functionality should work for any CCK content type, although I haven't tested each and every field type. The usage is as follows:
* Create a workflow and associate it to a CCK content type.
* The workflow state form lists all the fields of the content type and allows each field to be set as visible/invisible and editable/read-only, for the current state.

I've patched workflow-4.7.x-1.0 to add a "graph" action to the workflow settings page. This action generates a Graphviz DOT file representing the states as nodes and transitions as edges, with edge labels describing the roles performing the transitions. The function then invokes the Graphviz dot command to generate a PNG image of the graph. The function uses a PHP class that encapsulates the Graphviz generation, taken from the Mantis bug tracker (which is also GPL'd).

Some installation notes:

We have been using the workflow module to implement several customer applications, and an upcoming project will require some modifications to the module code itself. I'd like to share with you the problem and get your feedback, so as to better align our direction with the upcoming workflow.module developments.