Document Flow

States / ActionApps Bins

At any point, an Item in ActionApps can be in one (and only one) of the 3 states:

• Approved
• Holding
• Trashed

In ActionApps they are called bins, so we have Approved Bin, Holding Bin and Trash Bin.

The status of an item is determined by the numeric value in a special field status_code......

TIP: If you want to have a control over where a newly created item goes, use default value for functionality (Go to: Admin - Fields - Edit (status code) - Default.). the fields are numbered form 1 to 3, the numbers are

1 = approved
2 = holding bin
3 = trash bin

So, change the default value for the status_code..... field to 2 and the items will be posted directly into Holding Bin.

It is possible to display this field in the Input Form (possibly as selectbox), so the editors can decide where the item should go.

Automatic Expiration / Publishing

Any approved Item in ActionApps is always examined to find out whether it's either:

• Pending
• Active
• Expired

This status changes without an intervention, as the (system) time passes, like this

 Pending          Active             Expired
          |                       |
--------->|---------------------->|-----------
          |                       |
          \                       \
           \2.3. 2004              \18.4 2004
            publish_date....        expiry_date.....

As you can see above, ActionApps determines the status of the item by comparing the current system date with the values in two special fields, publish_date.... and expiry_date......

Most of the operations (e.g. displaying an index of items using index view will by default ignore items that are not evaluated as Active. That can be used for automatic expiration of old items. Similary, one can write articles (items) upfront and set the publish date to some date in future, although the situation when you use this feature is quite rare, compared to the auto expiry functionality.

--Marek 25 August 2005 19:02 (CEST)

WARNING: I have a few times panicked when my items suddenly disappeared. I think there should be some straightforward way to say "never" for the expiry filed. As of now, the expiry_date..... always has to have some value, and surprisingly the lifespan of projects sometimes exceeds the expectations.

Document Previews

~ToDo: How can one create a preview function, where editors can see what are they publishing,
without actually publishing it

Other Approaches to Document Workflow

~ToDo: Using categories & profiles to create more sophisticated workflow