Beginning with version 4.2 of eZ Publish users can employ a feature called „Object States“. As with many new features in complex software this feature remains unnoticed by most eZ Publish users. However, there are a lot of ways object states can improve your workflow. Let me explain some of them.
Post it © by Phillie Casablanca
If you happen to worken in an office you will propably be quite accustomed to post-it notes. Object states are quite similar to these notes. The states define user permissions like reading, writing, deleting etc. on a per page base. This user permissions come in different sets that got recognizable names. These names include „Archived“, „Top Secret“, „Draft“ etc. and are printed on colored notes. The user can then choose what object state shall aply to a given page, folder, picture etc.
Once you have assigned object states to your document you can define how different use classes can access those documents. For example, you can arrange your pages in a way that normal users can only access documents without assigned object states whereas your content providing employees can access archived documents and drafts. The top secret documents would be restricted to the managing staff only.
You can also make automated use of object states. One possibility is to set all news older than a week to „archived“. If you want to publish press releases in several language you can assign a state to documents pending translations. Those documents were then allowed to be edited by the translators and the translators were allowed to assign the draft state to them. Those draft were afterwards allowed to be finalized and published by the PR-staff.
