[Plone-UI] Improving CMSUI toolbar w/metadata + edit bar + notifications

[Laurence Rowe]

On 20 July 2011 22:47, Geir Bækholt <plone at baekholt.com> wrote:
> On 20-07-2011 01:41, Dan Jacka wrote:
>>
>> 1) I hope we keep the existing workflow dropdown.
>> Click-'State'-for-dropdown,-click-new-state-name to change workflow state
>> works very well. A list of colour-coded available states is much easier to
>> deal with than the 'Change state' radio buttons + comments + dates, even
>> if
>> they are in an overlay form.
>
> Personally, i think the quick-change menu we have today is overrated. In my
> experience, it makes the lives of plone-developers click-testing empty sites
> easier. It does not, however help real users.
> They first need information about workflows in the learning phase. We can
> help them better with more screen real estate.
> Then they need the ability to do good workflow practices and use
> changenotes/comments etc. — Which we can also encourage with more screen
> real estate.
>
> I still think Alex is right: we don't neccesarily have to increase the
> number of clicks. We can do this without radiobuttons and forms if we think
> a bit about how we design it.
>
> I have some ideas. I'll try to make a mockup of how this could work.
>
> I have to admit i have not thought about ways to represent multiple
> workflows in the UI.

A couple of points on workflows...

When you have a complex workflow application you tend to want to make
the workflow state and actions more prominent than they are by
standard - I tend to use a workflow portlet for this rather than the
dropdown menu. I think it's fine not to handle displaying multiple
workflow variables in the standard UI.

We currently support having per-transition action urls which let you
display a transition specific form when you click on a transition
action. Not all workflows will have a comment field (though most will
I guess). Making the comment part of a transition form would be more
in keeping with the DCWorkflow model.

Laurence