[opencms-dev] Workflow -- how to implement

[Paul D. Bain]

At -0700Tuesday 5/4/04 07:07 AM, Zemene Adgo wrote:

>Hi Paul D. Bain,
>
>First of all, I apologize for sending this e-mail
>without your permission. I [am] send[ing] this message because I
>couldn't find any relevant information from [other]  .  .  .
>sources, including [the] OpenCms mailing list.
>
>I'm doing a project called a "multilingual content
>management system". The main purpose of the project is
>localizing OpenCms to Ethiopian language (Ethiopia is
>a country found in East Africa) and to exchange
>documents. The translation part is already done.

         Not long ago, another developer inquired about localization for 
East Africa and Swahili. See the 26 April 2004 email from Frezewd Lemma 
(frezewdl at yahoo.com), "13 months instead of 12."

>I want to create a workflow process for meeting
>minutes, which will have the following steps:
>
>1) Authoring
>2) Editing
>3) Approval & publishing
>
>I want to assign an author to the authoring processes,
>and editor to the editing processes and publisher to
>the publishing process. After the author [has] created the
>document, he [should be able to]  .  .  .  assign it to workflow and send 
>[it] to the
>editor. The editor [should be able to]  .  .  .  make necessary changes to the
>document and send to the publisher. The publisher can
>then publish the document.
>So, there [should be]  .  .  .  a relation between the document and the
>workflow process.
>When I [examined the]  .  .  .  workflow of OpenCms, I couldn't find this
>kind of functionality.

Zemene,

         First, I am not an expert in programming under OpenCMS. That is 
one of the reasons that I have chosen to send a copy of this email to the 
OpenCMS mailing list, openCMS-dev at opencms.org. I hope that other developers 
will make comments on my remarks, correcting any mistakes that I might have 
made in my remarks.

         It may be possible to create the workflow that you want. However, 
you will probably have to do considerable programming, and you probably 
will _not_ be able to simply create a module to add the features that you 
want. In other words, you will probably have to change the core code of 
OpenCMS. You will probably have use classes that extend the abstract class 
CmsTask 
(see 
http://www.hema.ch/products/web/opencms/package5.0/com/opencms/file/CmsTask.html 
) or perhaps the class 
CmsTaskNew 
(http://www.hema.ch/products/web/opencms/package5.0/com/opencms/workplace/CmsTaskNew.html)
or perhaps 
CmsTaskDocu 
(http://www.hema.ch/products/web/opencms/package5.0/com/opencms/workplace/CmsTaskDocu.html). 
In the Java docs for OpenCMS (see 
http://www.hema.ch/products/web/opencms/package5.0/ ), there are several 
classes that begin with the phrase "CmsTask." Those are probably the 
classes that you need to study. You will probably also need to become 
familiar with the method "createTask()," which is partially documented on 
this 
page: 
http://www.hema.ch/products/web/opencms/package5.0/com/opencms/file/I_CmsResourceBroker.html#createTask 
.


See these prior emails on the topic of workflow:

1) The 5 June 2003 email from Sandro Pedrocchi, "6-eyes workflow", and

2) The 23 April 2003 email from Thomas Marz, "Write a module to add 
workflow functionality?"

See also this brief 
discussion: 
http://synyx.de/board/viewtopic.php?t=274&highlight=workflow&sid=648d558a66db828d5bed55fb5bd34e21

         I hope that I have answered some of your questions.

         If you want to discuss this matter further, please do so on the 
OpenCMS mailing list, where you will receive help from other developers, 
too. I am sorry that your prior email to the list on this subject was not 
answered.

Sincerely,
Paul Bain









>Any ideas are helpful for me.
>
>Sorry for taking your valuable time.
>
>Thank you very much,
>
>Zemene Adgo
>
>
>
>
>
>
>__________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs
>http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover