[Yanel-dev] Scheduler (valid-from-to) and Workflow

[Michael Wechner]

Hi

We recently discussed internally the relationship between scheduling 
tasks and workflow. We identified several cases which I think are worth 
discussing:


1) For example let's assume we have a simple
workflow with following transitions:

  submit for review: draft - review
  approve and publish: review - approved/live

and let's assume an editor can submit an article for review, but cannot 
approve/publish the article, then I would assume
that this editor also cannot schedule the publish task, right?

Hence I think the general rule should be that a person scheduling tasks 
can only schedule tasks which are feasible for this person otherwise.

Now the problem is for example with setting valid-from and valid-to 
dates, because these are similar to scheduling tasks, which means
a person which is not allowed to publish or de-activate a story should 
also not be able to set valid-from and valid-to dates.

WDYT?

2) Another problem might be a person which is allowed to publish and 
de-activate and let's assume there is a workflow transition which
allows to go directly from draft to approved/live. Now if this person 
sets the valid-from date and the article is still in draft state it seems
to me logical that the scheduler automatically publishes this article, 
but the problem can occur that in between another person (which has no
publish rights) is changing the article and hence the changed draft 
would go live instead the intended one.

WDYT?

3) The current workflow allows to send notifications when a transition 
is executed, but what about "warnings" ahead of executions by the
scheduler. For example saying: "Btw your article will be published 
tomorrow morning at 8am CET. Do you still want this to happen (because
it has been modified since you scheduled the task)?"

WDYT?

I am sure there are more cases and appreciate any feedback in order to 
figure out how we can best support the interworking between scheduler 
and workflow (and general actions).

Thanks

Michi