Workflow Policies

The state menu has a choice for policy:

Workflow is an advanced subject. It involves creation of a more regimented control of content creation, review, and publication. If you have a user account on a typical small Plone site, you will probably not encounter custom workflow policies, because there isn't a need for this more sophisticated control. But, the potential is there for using this functionality, as it is built in to Plone.

For an introduction to the workflow concept, consider an example involving a web site for a newspaper business, for which these different groups of people are at work:

Reporters

Can create stories, but can only submit them for review.

Editors

Can review stories, but can't publish completely. They send positively reviewed and edited stories up the line for further approval.

Copy Editors

Do final fact checking, fixes, and review, and may publish stories.

A workflow policy, sometimes abbreviated to workflow, describes the constraints on state-changing actions for different groups of people. Once the workflow policy has been created, it needs to be applied to an area of the website for the rules to take affect. In the example of the newspaper web site, a workflow policy would be set up and then applied to the folders where reporters do the work of adding news articles. Then, reporters create stories and send them up the line for review and approval:

Reporters would add news articles and would submit them (the publish menu choice is not available to them). Likewise, editors may reject the article for revision or they may, in turn, submit the article up the line to a copy editor for final proofreading and publication.

Configuring a workflow policy is a matter of applying it to an area of the website. The policy menu choice brings up the workflow policy panel:

This small panel contains a link with the explicit title, "Add a workflow policy's local configuration in the Folder," which offers an intermediate check to make sure the intention is clear. Clicking the link brings up a workflow scope selection panel:

 

In this example, there is only one workflow policy available, "Default Policy," which is the standard workflow policy for Plone web sites.  In the newspaper business example, there would be a policy here called something like "Editorial Review Policy." The choice here is between setting For this Folder, to apply the policy the contents of the folder itself, and the Below this folder choice, to apply the policy to any subfolders, as well. After saving, the workflow policy would be in effect for this area of the web site.