Technical

The approval procedures (approval chains) in Atlas allow the user to specify the content items which can be used in public websites. The plugins in the system, which build this component, start with com.tetracom.atlas.approval . An approval procedure is assigned to a content type(and all its items). The building blocks of the entity are called approval steps – the states, which a content item can be in. The approval procedures are not mandatory. The logic of the system is the following:

1. If a content type has no approval procedure – allow all items to participate in the sites.

2. If a content type has an approval procedure assigned – allow only the items in the last approval step of the procedure to participate in the sites.

Examine the approval procedure with the following steps:

Step1 – Offline

Step2 – Online

For example, this procedure is assigned to a content type – Book. This means that the user can show in their website only items, which are in the last state of their approval (in our case Online). The approval procedures are particularly valuable when many people are engaged in creating and editing content items. For example, one person may create a content item and put it in the state 'Offline'. Another person (an editor) may inspect the content item, make sure it is suitable for the website, and put it in the state' Online'.

Important classes:

ApprovalChain – contains the general properties of the approval procedure as well as its approval steps.

ApprovalStep – defines a single approval step.

Important services:

IApprovalService – provides all approval procedure data, including the relations with content types.