Thread

Hello,

I have a bug/question. I’ve set up my install with the following parameters:

* I added a status of Pending to the default statues of Open and Closed
* I created a member group named Authors who has access to edit all posts in the system
* I disabled the Open status for Authors, as they should only be publishing Pending articles

The problem I’m seeing now though is that Authors are going into Open entries and clicking Update. Now, because they do not have access to the Open status the entries are reverting to Pending and, in essence, being deleted from the live site. Is there anyway to set up a member group to be able to view entries, but not “Submit” them? I’d like for my authors to be able to view Open entries so they can copy/paste some content into their new Pending entry.

Thanks.
Mark.

Hi Mark,

I am thinking that if you are doing this on the back-end then you are going to need to create an extension that might be able to do that. If however you use a standalone-edit form I **guess** you might be able to use a conditional to see if the status is set to Open and if so convert all the text-fields or text-areas to readonly? That way they could view the entry but not change anything?

Hope that helps.

Best wishes,

Mark

Right, I think I may have to go with an extension (as I’m not using a SAEF for this) however, I would also need the Update button to be disabled, because even hitting submit will convert the Open entry to Pending without even as much as a warning.

I guess a larger picture question is; does this sound like a bug? I mean, If a user doesn’t have access to the Open status, should they be able to view Open entries? If they are able to view them, should they be allowed to update them?

Hi Mark,

I don’t think that it is a bug, instead just the way that ExpressionEngine works. I don’t think that Status is checked on the back-end at all. I think the only place it is checked is if you use a weblog tag but don’t specify a status to pull back in your template then it will only pull back the Open status entries. In the back end though I think that if you give access to people to edit entries then it is a one in all in kind of thing.

I think that you would probably have to use an extension to get what you need. I could be wrong though and maybe one of the ExpressionEngine tech support guys has a different answer?

Best wishes,

Mark

I think you’re correct Mark, but I’m wondering if that’s the best approach. Take the following workflow:

An Author (member group) comes to the site to rewrite a page, they click on the Open page in the edit tab (not having access to the Open status) and begin editing away. Knowing they want to check line lengths and image wrapping before publishing, they’re relieved to see that status is set to Pending. They hit “Update” (uhh ohh). Now they go to the staging site, which appends a status of “Pending” to all the weblog:entries tag. The see their page in the staging site, make a few additional changes and call it a day. Now a Publisher (a member group with access to the Open status) sees the Author has made her changes and switches the page to Open.

Now the problem here is that the entire time the entry was Pending, it was not Open. This means that, for however long the author took to edit the page the original entry did not appear anywhere on the site.

Can anyone come up with a workaround for this? I’m not sure exactly what the best approach is to this one.

I’m running into this problem too, actually. I’m using a stand-alone edit form to allow a user to make SOME changes to a previous post, but it keeps moving the post back to unapproved status, and I’d rather it not do that.

I’m trying to figure out a way to allow a user to edit an approved entry without sending it back to unapproved OR opening the door for them to approve NEW entries that haven’t passed through the review process.

Hi Mark,

Aha I get what you are saying now!! Sorry but I didn’t even realise that it was possible to only allow a status or certain status options to be available to certain member groups. Just made a new status and saw that if you edit it afterwards then you can indeed allow it to only be used by certain groups. Sorry about that but I wasn’t aware of that function but now I am!!

I did just try creating a new status called ‘Pending’ just like you have and only allowed a new member group to have access to that status. I also allowed them access to the Publish and Edit tabs.

I went and logged in as the new member with the new member group and I could post a new entry and all I saw in the status drop down was Pending. Also if I went to the Edit tab I did not see the standard ‘Getting Started With ExpressionEngine’ post which is the first entry on a new install as that is set to Open so effectively this was blocked from my view which I believe is what you need?

If so then I think it might be just you have your permissions for that member group not quite correctly set?

Hope that helps.

Best wishes,

Mark

Mark, the only problem is that I do want people to see those Open entries, so they can copy them. I think if I hide the Open from people who don’t have access to that status it would make more logical sense, however then those users wouldn’t have access to the entry to make duplicates.

Hi Mark,

Sorry I am being a dolt today. I now completely get what you are asking! I really should read the whole post and get my noodle around it first! Sorry but posted in the middle of writing some code for a plugin and got all confuddled!! 😊

I see what you are saying now you want Authors to be able to open up any entry whether they have written it or not and also whether or not they have access to the status just so that they can copy text from one entry to a new one! I get it now.

I don’t think there would be a way of doing that without an extension that would (if a hook exists to do this in the first place) checks which Status they are allowed to edit or in this case use and if the entry is set to a status other than the one they are allowed to use then modify the link in the edit page so that it opens the post up but doesn’t allow them to save it or perhaps instead it could pop the entry up in a new window using perhaps a stand-alone-edit form but without any submit possibilities so they can just copy the text?

Don’t know if any of that helps now that I (hopefully) have understood the question correctly! 😊

Sorry for being slow and getting completely muddled over this one.

Best wishes,

Mark

That’s fine Mark. I did end up creating an extension for this which simply checks the status of the entry when someone clicks edit. Then if they do not have access to that status I disable the Update/Submit button. It seems to work, but I’m wondering if this should be built in by default?

Hi Mark,

Great, glad you got it squared away and now that I am definitely correct in understanding what you meant I totally agree with you that this should be built in as standard otherwise it just doesn’t quite make sense.

Perhaps time for a Feature Request with a link back to this post? 😊

Would you be willing to share the extension so that I can learn from what you did?

Thanks.

Best wishes,

Mark

Possibly in a few weeks when our site launches. But it’s a very site specific hack now with group id’s hardcoded into the source.

Hi Mark,

Ah okay. If you can let me take a look though, even just at a ‘hacked’ version then that would be great just so that I can learn how you do all the stuff with extensions that you do do! 😊

Thanks again.

Speak to you soon.

Best wishes,

Mark

Mark,

I’m wondering if you’re on this with your magic. If not, I’m going to take a shot at it, my first extension.

Mark Huot/Adam: I’ve been trying to find a good solution to content staging - would you mind describing the workflow you set up using entry status? The weak point seems to always be making changes to existing content. You mentioned creating a copy of “Open” content. Are you automating the transition where the copy overwites the original, Open entry at some point?

Would there be any advantage to using weblog pairs (with identical category & field groups) to move entries between the dev and live weblogs using the options tab while editing/publishing?

Thanks for your time!

-Brent