Simple or Rigorous Workflow

Simple Workflow

Our demo website is set-up for the simple workflow approach. For Wired Desk there are two types of person an "Author" and an "Approver". Our simple workflow is that when the Author completes a web page or pages, they inform the "Approver" by whatever means they like.

The "Approver" then finds the Author's work by searching on the Author's username from a pulldown list. The "Approver" would then test the person's work and approve the pages that have passed. For the pages that have not passed, the Approver would communicate to the Author what ones they are.

The Author would go to his own work by pressing the "Your Work" button in Wired Desk. He could see straight away which pages are not approved without even asking the "Approver". This person corrects the errors in the pages and informs the Approver. This goes on until all is complete.

In lots of circumstance the Author and the Approver will be the same person. Thus Wired Desk caters for this situation and makes it easy to approve your own work after you test it.

Rigorous Workflow Option

Wired Desk offers the option to have more workflow states that track the progress of a web page more thoroughly. This serves a number of purposes:

1. More detailed management reporting and thus better control of the work in progress.
2. Enforcing/encouraging staff to test the work because they have to go through the "Tested" state.
3. Authors know straight away if there work has been rejected.

The workflow states used are:

Editing

Once you create a new web page or edit an "Approved" one, this is the state the page takes.

Tested

When an Author finishes a web page and has tested it out and they think it is ready for the "Approver" to check, they put the web page into this state.

Rework

This state is selected by the Approver when they re-check a web page due to errors.

Complete

This state is selected by the Approver when they think the web page is correct and ready for "Approval" to go live.

The Author knows when they see the "Rework" state that they have to do some corrections. Wired Desk provides a message facility for pages in the "Rework" state where the Approver can attach a message to the page about the error in the page. The Author can then click on the message present indicator(red exclamation mark) and read about the problem.

The "Complete" state is useful for delivering lots of new content at the same time. The Approver can wait for all the work to enter that state and then approve all the pages in one go. Thus doing one big release of web pages as opposed to a piece-meal approach.