include workflow manager

[vangheem]

Proposer: Nathan Van Gheem
Seconder: None as yet

Motivation

Plone's workflow capabilities are one of it's most powerful features; however, the ZMI does not provide an adequate mechanism to customize workflows. A workflow management UI that makes it easy for new users to create, edit and assign new workflows and manage workflow transitions through with content rules would be ideal.

Assumptions

• Since the interfaces make manipulating Plone's workflows very easy, users would be restricted from manipulating Plone's default workflows through the interface.

Proposal & Implementation

The PLIP aims to factor out the workflow manager in uwosh.northstar into a new package, plone.app.workflowmanager which would then be included in Plone core.

A demonstration of uwosh.northstar can be found at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO8RhPo9YNc

Feature overview

• provide functionality for manipulating most user concerning options of workflows
• integrate with content rules so users can easily provide transition actions that are not python scripts
• be integrated with Plone's UI
• provide an "advanced" mode for users that want potentially more complicated options

Deliverables

• plone.app.workflowmanager package
• Unit tests
• some sort of javascript testing
• Localization
• Documentation updates

Risks

There are a minimal amount of risks in implementing this as it's really just a better interface for what we have in the ZMI.

• Might need a more user documentation
• a considerable amount of new javascript code for the interface
• the workflow action implementation is heavily dependent on plone.contentrules implementation

Participants

• Nathan Van Gheem(vangheem)

Progress

Not towards a plone.app.workflowmanager package, but uwosh.northstar is already working.

[robgietema]

I think it's nice to have a tool like this but the current UI in the video introduces some new components which aren't used in the rest of Plone (like the floating menubar).

[vangheem]

Figuring out what to do with the menu system was difficult. It went through many iterations and I settled on where it is now. I open for suggestions for a better way to implement it.

Ideally, all the UI elements will take on the standard styling--right now I had to hack some of it just to make it look decent in Plone 3. Since this would be Plone 4 going forward, I wouldn't have to worry about any of those UI nuances.

[esteele]

Your PLIP has been accepted for consideration for Plone 4.1.

Framework Team voting on this PLIP was: Alec +1 Craig +1 Elizabeth +.5 Laurence +1 Martijn +0 Matthew +1 Rob +.5 Ross +1

The Framework Team has asked that you work closely with the UI team to ensure that the implementation maintains a consistency in UI patterns with the existing Plone core.

The initial implementation deadline for your PLIP is October 1st, 2010. The Framework Team would certainly appreciate you finishing beforehand so that they may begin evaluating it as soon as possible. Announce its readiness here once your implementation is ready for review.

[rossp]

PLEASE READ THIS AND RE-OPEN VALID PLIPS!

As we launch the new PLIP process we'd like to see which PLIPs:

• are still appropriate/needed
• still have owners/proposers/champions
• still have available implementers

If this PLIP should still be considered for future releases of Plone please do re-open this ticket and assign an appropriate milestone. If it should be considered for the next release of Plone, use the 4.2 milestone. Also be sure to update the PLIP description, requester, owner, etc. and include a comment detailing recent progress and new plans. We will use all these details in the new continuous PLIP process.