Component state & permissions redesign
We held a design session with Kate, Cindy, and Erich on Dec 7th, to update to the component workflow state and permissions features of Editoria.
Background
The current model is a combined workflow stage indicator and permissions management system. Every component has four workflow status indicators below it: Style, Edit, Review, Clean. Each of these workflow stages can be toggled between one of three states (e.g. “To Style” -> “Styling” -> “Styled”). This indicates the status of each component, and governs user permissions for each component, e.g. whether a user has read-only or edit permissions for a given component. There are also restrictions on which users can change which workflow states at different times.
This model doesn’t meet the editors’ needs in two areas:
- The text-only status indicators don’t provide a clear at-a-glance indication of a component’s status, or the progress of all the components in a book overall, as statuses are displayed in text only with no color/shading. Editors need to easily get a sense of the status of a whole book with a quick look at the Book Builder view.
- Workflow and permission management are intimately related to status, but they are not exactly the same and might be best separated.
To address this, we should update the component workflow state indicators to provide an easy at-a-glance progress overview in the Book Builder interface. Once we have that right, we will revisit access/permissions management, and also consider what book dashboard-level status indicators make sense.
Component status display redesign
The editors have articulated an updated workflow stage design, with the following workflow stages displayed under each component, left-to-right in a timeline-like view:
- Upload
- File Prep
- Edit
- Review
- Clean Up
- Page Check
- Final
Unlike the current implementation, the text of these 7 stages should not change as a component progresses through them. Instead, each of these stages will change color/background fill to indicate the current state. Except for the very first “Upload” stage, each step will have 3 possible states (same as current implementation):
- Not started: no background fill color
- Currently in progress: partial or light background fill color
- Completed: dark/complete background fill color
The exact implementation of these 3 states is open for design: it could be no/light/dark background fill color, 3 different colors per step, background color across half of the cell for “in process,” etc.). The desired effect is a general left-to-right progress bar that is gives a strong visual indicator of progress at a glance, not only per component but for all the components in the Book Builder.
This is the inspiration for the new design, which Cindy brought to the design session, and a quick sketch from the design session. These are only examples to provide a feel of the kind of left-to-right status indicator we discussed.
Setting the state & permissions
- As a starting point, each workflow step (except the first, “Upload”) will be set to the desired state by the user clicking to toggle through the 3 options (not started, currently in progress, completed). Like the current implementation, users will have to set the state manually. Communications between production editors, copyeditors, and authors will happen outside the system.
- All users should have the ability to change any workflow step to any state
- User permissions (read-only, edit, turn track changes on/off, etc.) should be decoupled from component state for the time being. All users should be able to edit any component in any state. We will revisit permissions for further design once the component status indications are redesigned, so it would be ideal to remove the current permissions but preserve the option to reintroduce them.
- This shouldn’t affect the current permissions to add/rename/delete books at the book dashboard level
Exception: first “Upload” state
The very first “Upload” stage should have different behavior from the rest of the stages.
- It should replace the current grey/blue “no content/has content” semicircular indicator by each component. Including this as the first workflow step will unify all the status indications into one paradigm.
- This state should not be clickable to toggle. Instead, it should begin in the “not started” state, change to an “in progress” state while awaiting the document from INK, then change to the “complete” state once content is uploaded into it. This is the only stage that should change automatically; all other stages will be set manually
- The “not started,” “in progress,” and “completed” states for “Upload” should share the same visual model as the other workflow stages.