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brien-anca - 7/15/2011 12:24:58 AM

Allocate a workflow to a specific user rather than a role

I am trying to configure a workflow with the following steps:
Setup
Assign To Translator
Translate
Translation Review
Ready To Publish
Published
Archived

I've got it going OK, but the problem is that if we have 2 translators in the Translator role, they will both see the same document awaiting their approval. In the "assign to translator", I'd like a drop down of all users with the role "Translator" and then I can select one. Then in their "My desk" tab, only the person allocated will see this document in their "Waiting on my approval" list, not both of them.

Is this extra layer of workflow allocation possible?

Ideally, only the allocated resource would get notified of workflow step change, not both

Kentico Support

kentico_zdenekc - 7/22/2011 9:48:58 PM

RE:Allocate a workflow to a specific user rather than a role

Hi,

That's quite interesting request.
However it's currently not possible by default, since the steps are assigned to the roles and the notification is sent in the code (WorkflowManager) to all role members.

You could maybe somehow incorporate the Comment, stored for the WorkflowHistory action, or even add some custom control - dropdown list - and send the email manually in your code. The emails are sent using SendWorkflowEmails method, so you could search through the CMSModules/Content codefiles where is it used and use your customization here.
Please note that these are not all the places where it is used.

Hope this helps a little.

Regards,
Zdenek

Member

brien-anca - 7/24/2011 8:01:10 PM

RE:Allocate a workflow to a specific user rather than a role

Thanks for your comments Zdenek, but unfortunately, that won't work well enough since translator 2, when logged on, would see translator 1's documents as "awaiting your approval".

I think I'll stick with the default role based workflow allocation for now, but this should be pushed up as a feature request for future releases. In working quite extensively now with the workflow engine, there are a number of things that let it down for real world apps. eg:

1. Inability to do fine-grain assignment of tasks to users with the same role. FYI, imagine a Project Management tool that assigns all programming tasks to all programmers. Not very useful. This is equivalent to what Kentico does.

2. Customisation of the workflows is too restrictive. Whilst you can add workflow steps between edit and publish, you can't customise the edit and publish steps (eg: can't allocate a role to edit).

3. Within a custom workflow, the button and message names become very confusing. eg: "Send to Approval" is confusing if the next step is "translate"

Kentico Support

kentico_zdenekc - 8/3/2011 4:33:04 PM

RE:Allocate a workflow to a specific user rather than a role

Hi,

Thank you for your feedback and suggestions. There are always many things that can be improved. User requests sometimes go more or less further than current feature implementation.

I will pass your suggestions and requirements to our product managers for consideration. Just before that, I'd like to discuss shortly your points. Feel free to correct my comments if I'm missing something.

1/ This is - I suppose - a note on the fact that you can assign only a role to a given workflow step, not just particular user...is that correct?
You've mentioned a Project Management tool - was it just a coincidence or have you already checked the features of our Project management module?

2/ I think you could use Permissions (general and document-level) to control which role can edit particular document...but maybe I'm not following what exactly would you need.

3/ I agree. In a more complex Workflow, this can be confusing. You may consider using just the Workflow tab of the document Properties, where the list of all workflow steps can be seen, with current step highlighted and a possibility to add comments.

Thank you in advance for any further comments.

Regards,
Zdenek C.

Member

brien-anca - 8/3/2011 5:36:26 PM

RE:Allocate a workflow to a specific user rather than a role

1/ No. Years of experience managing projects and working with other workflow systems in ERP (for example)

2/ No. I mean the Edit state in the workflow. When I add a workflow step of Translate to German (for example), I can allocate the role 'Translator German' as the only role allowed to access the document in that state. But the first state (Edit), I cannot allocate roles to it, so anyone with edit capabilities for that DocType can edit it. Also, I can't easily override the actions that happen as the document enters the published state, or what happens if you hit save after published. Also, you can't have forks or loops in the workflow just linear one step at a time. This is more an architectural philosophy issue than a specifc feature request. Ie: if you are building an extensible framework, you can't easily predict what might need to be overridden, so allow almost everything to be overridden. This is what I'm finding with most things I'm trying in Kentico. The API runs out of steam and I bump into hard coded limitations before I can get the feature configured to the way I'd like it to be. In another thread, I was asking how to override the Save after publihed behavour and was informed I can't. OK fine, but the responder went on to question my need to make this override, which I thought showed a lack of empathy with your customer. So when you say for instance, we have a project management module, based on my experiences with Kentico, I am immediately skeptical that it would work properly for any real-world applications.

3/ Yes. I actually decided to hide the workflow buttons in the main edit panel and force users to use the workflow tab, and also changed the button text to "Approve and push to next Step" etc. and changed the archive button to blue so that mistakes and confusion are less likely.

PS. I hope these comments make it back to your customer support and development mangers. I think your product is pretty good, but it could be a whole lot better with a slight change in focus and attention to detail.

Kentico Support

kentico_zdenekc - 8/8/2011 9:14:52 AM

RE:Allocate a workflow to a specific user rather than a role

Hi,

Thank you for your answer and valuable comments.

I have forwarded your requirements and comments to our product management, so they could consider implementing them in future versions.

Some actions like workflow multi-step skipping may be possible using custom workflow handlers or custom code using API.

One way or another, I would still recommend to check the project management module features, if it could be sufficient for your aim(s).

Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance.

Best regards,
Zdenek C.