Overview:
- What’s new in Umbraco Workflow 11.2 and 10.2?
- How to test
- How to get your hands on the Release Candidates
- When is the public release?
As with previous releases, we’re publishing a release candidate for you to explore and evaluate. Any feedback on the new features is absolutely welcome.
How to get access to the RCs and how to provide feedback are explained at the end of this post.
Enough with the housekeeping, let’s have a look at what’s coming in Umbraco Workflow 11.2 and 10.2.
What’s new in Umbraco Workflow 11.2 and 10.2?
Approval thresholds
First, a very quick Workflow history lesson. Prior to this release, Workflow has managed approval groups with a first-come, first-served approach, meaning a task can be approved by a single member of an approval group. Typically, that will be whoever responds first to an email or dashboard notification.
But as sites get larger and more complex, single approvals are not always appropriate. Sometimes we need a partial or absolute consensus.
That’s the core concept of approval thresholds, introduced in this minor.
Workflows within workflows
Approval thresholds can be viewed as a workflow within a workflow - at each stage of a workflow, it is now possible to define the number of approvals required before advancing to the next stage.
The threshold options are:
- One: pending task requires approval from any member of the assigned approval group.
- Most: pending task requires an absolute majority of group members. For example, a group with three members requires two approvals, a group with four members requires three approvals, and a group with six members requires four approvals.
- All: pending task requires approval from all group members.
By default, nothing changes - each stage requires a single approval. Approval thresholds can be enabled from the Workflow section in the Backoffice, or from app-settings.json. Node-specific configuration is set on the Workflow content app, in the configuration tab. Refer to the documentation for more details.
When changes are rejected, and the approval threshold is Most or All, approvals can optionally be reset or retained. It’s another configuration option intended to help tailor Workflow to your specific requirements.
For example, in a stage with an approval group with five members and a threshold of All, rejecting a task can either require all five members to approve the resubmitted content or alternatively, only those members who had not approved the content before it was rejected.
New functionality is great, but it needs to look good too
The workflow detail overlay has received some UI love to better display the status of the current workflow. It now displays additional information about the threshold progress at each stage, as well as user details for approvals past and future.
Similarly, the approval flow configuration UI has added controls to allow setting the stage-specific approval threshold.
Approval thresholds are a licensed feature but can be tested using the trial license. Learn more about Workflow licenses.
Bonus inclusions from the x.1.2 patch releases
Workflow 10.1.2 and 11.1.2 landed on April 18, with some additional configuration options worth noting, as well as a few bug fixes and improvements.
Optional comments
Approval comments can now be set to optional. This allows workflow tasks to progress without requiring low-effort comments purely to satisfy validation rules. If the content changes are acceptable, just hit Approve.
Comments will always be required when initiating a workflow, as downstream approvers need to know what has changed.
Delayed content locking
When the ‘Lock active content’ setting is true, it is now possible for the user who submitted changes for approval to make further changes until the workflow has received at least one approval.
Previously content was locked when the workflow was initiated, which meant editors had to cancel pending workflows to make further changes.
Other improvements
- Ensure notifications inheriting from ObjectNotification have a public Target property
- Improve UI notification when publish fails on workflow completion
- Improve logged messages when publish fails on workflow completion
- Fixes issues with casing on Linux
- Ensure canEdit flag is set correctly when Workflow application state changes
- Ensure canceled workflows are never marked as actioned by admin when canceled by the original change requestor, regardless of their admin status
How to test
You can either create a new installation using the package available from the link below or upgrade an existing Umbraco 10 or 11 project. Both scenarios can provide valuable feedback.
If you find anything in the RC that isn’t working as expected, please provide feedback on the GitHub issue tracker for Workflow.
If you’re new to Workflow, the documentation site will help get you up and running.
How to get your hands on the Release Candidates
The release candidate is available from the usual Nuget feed
When is the public release?
We’re aiming for a public release on Tuesday, May 9, 2023.
