Stiltsoft Talk app

Overview

This page describes how to avoid unwanted workflow transitions (for example, a state transition on a minor change, actioned by the updated parameter on the workflow state macro) when using the Stiltsoft Talk app.

You need the Stiltsoft Talk app version 2.6.0 or above.

The problem

In many cases, workflow state macros marked as final=true (published) also use the updated parameter to automatically transition back to a draft state should the page be edited.

When a talk is added or resolved, data is stored back to the page (or blog post) causing the updated transition to occur – because the content has been updated.

From an end-user perspective, this seems odd, because they were only "talking" and not editing the page (they are unaware that the talking caused updates to the page).

The solution

The solution is not to use the updated parameter to action a transition on the state macro, but instead use a workflow trigger.

To prevent large numbers of notifications to page watchers, the Stiltsoft Talk app marks its content updates as "Minor change" (the same as if you clear the "Notify Watchers" checkbox while editing a page).

With triggers and conditions, we can

  • filter out "Minor Change" events

  • then use an action to action the state transition

For example, if your original workflow looks like this:

{workflow:Old} {state:Draft|submit=Published} {state} {state:Published|final=true|updated=Draft} {state} {workflow}

You would change it to this:

{workflow:New} {state:Draft|submit=Published} {state} {state:Published|final=true} {state} {trigger:pageupdated|state=Published|isminorchange=false} {set-state:Draft} {trigger} {workflow}

The following changes were made:

  • removed the updated=Draft from the Published state

  • replaced this updated transition on the Draft state with

    • pageupdated trigger

    • trigger is filtered to non-minor updates ( isminorchange=false )

    • and, when applicable, invokes the set-state macro to transition the workflow to the Draft state

With the updated workflow, minor changes are ignored, but normal changes still trigger the workflow state transition.

The isminorchange parameter is a workflow condition that can be used in a pageupdated  or newsupdated trigger with the Stiltsoft Talk app.

App configuration

There is also a Document Management app setting which may be affected by the Stiltsoft Talk app updating content...

Setting

Where

Notes

Setting

Where

Notes

Page Update Reset Approval

If enabled, content updates will reset any approvals in an active content review.

See also