Content object states: functional requirements

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Content Object States
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:Authors: Kristof Coomans



Preface
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Experience with customer projects has proven that using the current workflow
system is often too complex to handle simple state transitions of content. There
needs to be an alternative for this, which we will call "content object states".



Features
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We want to relate content objects to one or multiple "content object states".
These states will also be connected to the system of roles and policies, in
order to allow certain users to read, edit or remove content in certain states
and to disallow this in other states. Separate policies will also be provided
which allows users to assign a specific state to an object, and to perform the
transition of one content object state to another.

Each content object state belongs to one "content object state group", in order
to group them logically. Object states can be ordered inside their group,
mostly for displaying purposes. The first object state in the group is the default
one.

A content object can have only one object state of the same group at the same
time. State transitions are only allowed between states of the same group.

It should also be possible to define new template overrides for content objects
in a specific state.

The names and descriptions of the object states should be translatable in the
administration interface.