Has anyone found a good way to show draft previews to non-cms users?

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Dmitry Terner

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Feb 15, 2012, 10:00:34 AM2/15/12
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We get asked this by CMS users all the time and so far I have not had a good answer for them. The story goes "I have a boss who cannot be bothered to log in and review something but I need to show them the progress before submitting the changes. Also they have no imagination so they need to see it in situ" I'm paraphrasing .... slightly.

So does anyone know of a good way to tackle this?

Thanks,

- Dmitry

not...@endtransmission.co.uk

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Feb 15, 2012, 12:35:39 PM2/15/12
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Have you tried a big stick? ;)

If the boss just needs to see it in situ, you can always set up a separate project variant with it's own publication target. This will let you publish out draft content somewhere that people can review it.

Paul

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Ray Evans

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Feb 15, 2012, 1:08:51 PM2/15/12
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Struggled with this for a while as well…  using the draft state and publishing it to a different publishing target seemed to create another set of problems.

 

In the end, I created a development publication package, and then created a Development Area node in the site tree where editors can create new content.  All content in this node uses the development publication package, and publishes to an internal site where new content can be reviewed. 

 

When they’re ready to go live with a page – or set of pages, I disconnect them from the development area, and then reconnect them to the appropriate section within our live site tree.

 

If there’s a set of pages (a page with a number of child pages), I do have to remember to update the publication package – when disconnecting, the development area publication package remains assigned to the child pages list.

 

Cheers,

Ray

Markus Giesen

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Feb 15, 2012, 8:36:06 PM2/15/12
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The ideal solution for this is a second project variant.
Call it Preview or Staging and use the normal HTML templates for it.
Set it to "publish pages saved as draft" for this variant.
Then create a publishing target ideally on a password secured or
internal server.

That's it. Hope that helps?

On Feb 16, 5:08 am, "Ray Evans" <Ray.Ev...@wd-deo.gc.ca> wrote:
> Struggled with this for a while as well...  using the draft state and
> publishing it to a different publishing target seemed to create another
> set of problems.
>
> In the end, I created a development publication package, and then
> created a Development Area node in the site tree where editors can
> create new content.  All content in this node uses the development
> publication package, and publishes to an internal site where new content
> can be reviewed.
>
> When they're ready to go live with a page - or set of pages, I
> disconnect them from the development area, and then reconnect them to
> the appropriate section within our live site tree.
>
> If there's a set of pages (a page with a number of child pages), I do
> have to remember to update the publication package - when disconnecting,
> To view this discussion on the web visithttps://groups.google.com/d/msg/reddot-cms-users/-/0_UhG4szsfwJ.
> To post to this group, send email to reddot-c...@googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> reddot-cms-use...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/reddot-cms-users?hl=en.

Tony Chung

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Feb 15, 2012, 8:47:48 PM2/15/12
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Does anyone else see the idiocy of this? Why can't OpenText have an
interim stage where pages can be released but not set to publish until
it gets into workflow?

We have different problems in our environment where multiple authors
share content responsibility on the same pages. It's a huge headache
to force drafts to be released in order to pass the work onto the next
stage. And with enough headaches publishing each project into its own
space, I couldn't imagine publishing to a secondary project. Also,
what if someone chooses the wrong project?

As for the boss who can't be bothered to log in, that problem is
solved by active directory. Visit the CMS page, get logged in. Then
open the link to the preview window, specifying the page GUID. Only
works if you have access to those pages, but if they're all released
anyway...

Thanks for listening,
-Tony

Jian Huang

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Feb 15, 2012, 9:20:13 PM2/15/12
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Tony, I think Markus just answered the question.

With the page collaboration, here is a built in functionality to assign it to someone else even when it is draft. If that is not enough, I wrote a plugin so user can do that and send email via CMS. I posted the solution on solutionexchange. OpenText support can also provide plugin when asked.

Sent from my iPhone

Jian Huang

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Feb 16, 2012, 9:19:52 AM2/16/12
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To save everyone time, here is the plugin for editorial collaboration:

http://www.solutionexchange.info/assignit.htm

-Jian

On Feb 15, 9:20 pm, Jian Huang <jhuangsoftw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Tony, I think Markus just answered the question.
>
> With the page collaboration, here is a built in functionality to assign it to someone else even when it is draft.  If that is not enough, I wrote a plugin so user can do that and send email via CMS.  I posted the solution on solutionexchange.  OpenText support can also provide plugin when asked.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Feb 15, 2012, at 8:47 PM, Tony Chung <to...@tonychung.ca> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Does anyone else see the idiocy of this? Why can't OpenText have an
> > interim stage where pages can be released but not set to publish until
> > it gets into workflow?
>
> > We have different problems in our environment where multiple authors
> > share content responsibility on the same pages. It's a huge headache
> > to force drafts to be released in order to pass the work onto the next
> > stage. And with enough headaches publishing each project into its own
> > space, I couldn't imagine publishing to a secondary project. Also,
> > what if someone chooses the wrong project?
>
> > As for the boss who can't be bothered to log in, that problem is
> > solved by active directory. Visit the CMS page, get logged in. Then
> > open the link to the preview window, specifying the page GUID. Only
> > works if you have access to those pages, but if they're all released
> > anyway...
>
> > Thanks for listening,
> > -Tony
>
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