I've proposed a session for the upcoming DrupalCon DC.

The session is titled, "Building Complex Application and Publishing Workflows."

Abstract: 

Do your site editors need a complex publishing workflow? Should your site behave more like a web application, responding to a myriad of user- and system-triggered events? Or do you simply want to add that extra little feature that would make your Drupal site just perfect for your site and business needs?

Join us as we present a quick-start session on using the Triggers, Actions, and Workflow modules to create the workflows your site needs.

Agenda

In this session, we'll look at why you might need structured workflows on your sites, and how you can create them. Topics include:

1. Common reasons for needing workflows
2. An overview of the Triggers, Actions, and Rules modules
3. Scenario: A complex site publishing workflow
4. Scenario: A site application workflow
5. Mini-cases: A quick look at solutions to other common issues

Discussions on scenarios look at the end-to-end process of creating the solution:

1. Needs analysis
2. User story
3. Planning the logic with the Drupal modules
4. Implementation
5. Testing

Goals

1. Create an understanding of the reasons you might want to implement structured workflows
2. Provide a blueprint you can use to implement key workflow solutions
3. Provide base ideas for creating solutions for ad hoc needs

Please vote for it here:
http://dc2009.drupalcon.org/session/building-compl...

Also from Tree House Agency, check out and vote on these sessions:

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Introduction

The Need

Our clients and other Drupal site administrators would like to use the Workflow module to schedule transition states in their publishing workflow.

The Problem

Currently, within the Workflow module a node cannot be assigned a scheduled state change upon node creation. A node must be saved first, then edited a second time by the user.

After reading this comment in the Workflow module issue queue: http://drupal.org/node/189572#comment-704334 I decided to try to add a little more automation to the process of creating a node and adding a scheduled state change.

In this Post

You'll learn how to create a publishing workflow for your website, and how to improve the process of scheduling a transition change during node creation.

Let's begin.

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Rapid application and web site development.  Increasing demand for web standards. New standards and technologies appear, grow, and morph together within shorter and shorter cycles.  Webmasters must be more productive than ever. 

These seven tips will help you become a more productive webmaster:

1. The right tools
2. The right environment
3. Patterns
4. Study
5. Web communities
6. Good work habits
7. A life

1. Use the right tools

Webmasters can find plenty of excellent tools now to:

• design and develop faster
• meet standards
• reduce redundant tasks
• automate repetitive tasks 

The old saying, "Use the right tool for the right job", remains true today.  Invest time today in finding yourself the right tools for the jobs you do. 

You have more choices than ever before.

The net houses a myriad of web developer software.  Some of the best web development applications and tools are free or open-source.  Yes, many excellent web design applications still cost, yet can be worth paying for. 

Don't skimp. 

Come up with creative ways to buy the software you need.  When I started freelancing, my first client bought me Dreamweaver Ultradev and Fireworks (2 then 3 - back in the stone age of web design).  I simply built the purchase into the up-front costs of the project, and convinced the client of the need.  If you are a professional web designer, build the costs of new software into your next job. 

A technical discussion of methodologies for choosing the right software:

http://www.ddj.com/architect/184415067

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Need to send yourself an email quickly, without interrupting your work flow?

Here's a Gmail tip I found on LifeHack.org. It was also published on Web Worker Daily as part of a great article titled, "10 Ways to Pimp Your Gmail."

Here's how:

(Modified slightly from the version on Web Worker)

Quick compose tip:

The Task: Set up a quick compose bookmarklet in Firefox to send an email within Gmail.

From within your Gmail account,

1) Click on "Compose Mail" in Gmail, and then click on the "New window" pop-out button on the right hand side of the compose area to bring it to a new window;

2) Once the new window has opened right-click on any part of the blue space within the opened window. In the drop down menu that opens, select "Bookmark This Page" and save it in your Bookmarks Toolbar folder.

3) Minimize the compose window. On the Firefox bookmark toolbar, right-click on the new bookmarklet you've just created, select Properties and check "Load this bookmark in the sidebar".

Now just click on this bookmarklet at any time when you want to send yourself a new task, or send someone else a quick email.

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The Need

The Archdiocese Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America (Archdiocese) wanted to use its Antiochian.org web site to promote awareness and understanding of the Orthodox Faith and the work of the Archdiocese.  They needed a web site to serve as a tool for effective communication to various audiences, including persons within the Archdiocese, other churches, the general public, and the press.

The site had to be easy to use for site visitors and for those who added content and administered the site.  The site’s appearance and user experience needed to be pleasing, as well as serve to further communicate who the Archdiocese is as an organization and as a church.

Sections of the site needed a cohesive look and user experience, to communicate unity across its many departments and organizations.

Web site accessibility was also an important consideration when developing the organization’s site.

The Results

Successful migration of the organization’s main web site from a large static html site to a Drupal powered CMS, realizing the following benefits:

• A web site based on a system and standards that are widely supported in the business and non-profit communities, providing many new support options
• A standardized system to make updates in a timely fashion and provide better support
• Improved search capabilities for visitors to easily find content relative to their interests and needs
• A better audio system, improved video postings, an easier way to syndicate content and to enable users to subscribe to the site content

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Proper Configuration Checks for External Applications to Use Taxonomy Terms

If you want your users to be able to assign terms to their content when they are using an external blogging application, like Windows Live Writer, make sure you have the Taxonomy module enabled, and that you have selected the appropriate content types, those available to the Blog API. I have forgotten to do this a few times when adding a new content type to use with the Blogging API. Each time a new content type is created, taxonomy requires you to go back and specify whether your new content type can use a vocabulary.

Content types section: admin/content/taxonomy/edit/vocabulary/<vocab id>

Getting Good URL Names by Using Pathauto

If you have Drupal’s Path Module enabled to allow users to rename URLs (custom URLs), I recommend using the “Pathauto” module in combination with your external blogging client. You can set it to give the content a URL based on the post title.

http://drupal.org/project/pathauto

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An external blogging application like Windows Live Writer will allow you to create and publish posts from your desktop to your Drupal site. But, before you can post via one of these applications you’ll need to enable and configure your Blog API module and a few additional settings.

Step 1: Enable the Modules

Enable your Blog and Blog API modules here: admin/build/modules

Step 2: Make Content Types Available to External Clients

Select the content types you’d like to make available to external blogging clients: admin/settings/blogapi

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Allowing Tags to be Added in the Post Body Text

Free Tagging when the Blog API Does Not Support It

The following is a quick code sample showing the start of a Drupal module which lets a user add new tags to a post by placing the tags in the body of the post in a format like so:

[tags]blog, blog api, blogging, Drupal 6, weblog, windows live writer, wlw[/tags]

Jump to the Source Code

Use Case

I’m only using code like this for one use case.  It’s for clients who do a lot of editing and posting of their Drupal content through Windows Live Writer.

With Windows Live Writer and Drupal, my clients use the “Movable Type API”.  Without extending the API, it does not yet support adding new vocabulary terms.  Thus, from Windows Live Writer to Drupal sites, one can only tag content with existing terms.  This code allows new tags to be added.

The terms are added to a specified vocabulary id and associated with the new or updated content node.

The inline tags are removed from the body of the text before insert or update.

• What's YUI Grids CSS and what are its benefits?
• What's in the library?
• How do we use it?

Note: The sound quality on the low res version is somewhat poor. You may want to watch the High Res QuickTime Movie, or just download the PDF to view.

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Steve Pavlina over at Personal Development for Smart People proposes a solution to avoiding the “enormous blob of complexity” when working on large projects.  Many of the regular projects we work on daily have an already well defined path to completion.  Steve proposes breaking those types of projects “down into a lengthy list of ‘microtasks,’ planning it all the way from beginning to end if possible”.  In doing this preplanning upfront, we can move into the project and just flow from microtask to microtask until completion (next action to next action for us GTD users). 

Steve wrote an example list of microtasks involved in writing a new blog article.  You can find his original steps here:  http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/07/microtasks/

I have modified his list for my own purposes.  Below is Steve’s list with my modifications highlighted in yellow.

Writing a new blog article. 

The steps are in sequential order:

1. Define a primary objective for the article (inform, persuade, entertain, or inspire).
2. Brainstorm topic ideas, or review the list of reader-submitted topic suggestions, starred and shared Google reader items, recent delicious links, article ideas in someday list.
3. Select a topic.
4. Do a quick and dirty, free-form writing session to get ideas down without regard to structure.
5. Decide how to organize the ideas for clarity (chronological, topical, hierarchical, sequential, etc).
6. Sort the output of #4 based on the desired structure.  Define the main sections and subsections.
7. Identify supporting material to include (examples, analogies, quotes, statistics, images, stories, links, Wikipedia, etc), and add it to the outline.
   • Checkhttp://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/03/where-to-find-g.html
   • http://www.sxc.hu/
8. Refine the outline from #6 and #7 for completeness and balance.
9. Expand each section of the outline into paragraphs (and bullet lists if appropriate).
10. Insert meaningful subheadings into the article.
11. Write the opening.
12. Write the closing.
13. Edit the article for content, clarity, and conciseness.
14. Spell-check the article.
15. Brainstorm possible titles for the article (clear, interesting, keyword-rich).
16. Select a title.
17. Select blog categories for the article.
    • Look at delicious  for examples
    • Look at technorati for examples
18. Decide when to post the article (now or future-post).
19. Publish the article.
    • Post with Live writer or on-line editor.
    • View post on-line.
    • Look for display problems.
    • Verify tags and images are fine.
20. Tag with delicious, digg, and other places.
21. Email and tell people you know who would be interested in the article.
22. After the article has been online for several hours, evaluate reader feedback and fix any reported typos.
23. Make sure I am subscribed to all places this article might receive a comment on.
    • My own blog
    • Digg
    • Delicious
    • Technorati
24. Set date to check back on article in one month for stats.
    • See who’s linking.
    • See where other traffic is coming from.
    • See what search phrases land people on the article.
    • Evaluate opportunities for further promoting.

--modified from http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/07/microtasks/
--(used by permission)

Steve Pavlina has a number of great articles on his blog Steve Pavlina's Personal Development for Smart People . Another favorite of mine is Freeing Mental RAM at: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/08/freeing-mental-ram/ .

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