A whole new workflow
A fair few comments were coming into Product Board about the workflow module's look and feel, and we had to agree, it was looking a bit dated. The new design isn't just a lick of paint, though. It's now fully responsive and mobile-friendly, as well as getting some nice new features.
The new polished look & feel makes better use of the space available. Workflows look less cluttered and easier to navigate. Thumbnails are now bigger, and we added a large preview for both images, documents, and videos. Buttons are more prominent to help with accessibility, and some reworking behind the scenes means that stages now load faster too. For more information on specific features, see the below sections.
Stage Indicator panel
This is a new panel in Quick View that will give users an overview of which stages have already been completed in a particular workflow and what the remaining stages are (unless any of those branches).
Each stage is listed with an indication of its status and icon.
- Filled-in means it’s been actioned,
- Hollow is active
- Greyed out, still to come.
For workflows where future stages can go in more than one direction, this is covered by the ellipses symbol.
As well as showing you where you are, clicking on a completed stage will pop up the details of that stage’s last iteration.
For those of you who want to see the workflow flow in more detail and/or if it branches and therefore shows an ellipsis, you can still do this by clicking the “View full diagram” button.
Please note: if there are multiple open stages simultaneously, then the panel will show the branch to which the currently viewed active stage belongs.
File uploads
Uploading and viewing files in the workflow have had a complete makeover. Gone is the upload popup, and in its place, a drag and drop zone has been added. A large preview for each file uploaded has also been added, accessible by clicking the eye icon or double-clicking the thumbnail.
Annotations
Now we have a large preview for workflow files, we have enabled annotations for all workflow types. We also received a few requests to allow all participants of a workflow project to see annotations added at any stage, not only stages they could action. This improvement has been added as part of this release.
Forms
Along with uploads, form fields have been updated. They are now accessible, and the content will autosave. This means you won’t lose anything if you accidentally close the window or if the page refreshes after uploading/tagging assets. We’ve also made the stage action buttons sticky so no more having to scroll to the top again on stages with lengthy forms.
Many times, something that’s been asked for is the ability to format text in comments fields with bold, italic, bullet points, etc. This is now possible by changing any “textarea” fields to a “texteditor” field over in the metadata set, e.g., commenting.
Any formatting applied will show on the stage in both Quick View and History View, as well as in any email notifications it’s sent in. We’ve added the same editor to the “Send email” action, so you can add some formatting there as well. Please speak to your account manager for more help on changing these fields.
Stages waiting for other users to action
One of the things that confused users of the Workflow was when a stage was waiting to be actioned by someone else, as we didn’t show this anywhere. Now, when looking at such a workflow, you will see a “Waiting” badge at the top of the page. Hovering over the badge will list the user(s) who still need to action the stage.
Stage Submission message
With the “Waiting” badge, you can now configure a popup that will show to the end-user once they have actioned a stage. You can add a message such as “Your artwork is now with the approvers” and buttons to go to the next stage and/or a different area of the site, for instance, the OK button can take the end-user back to their Workflow dashboard or the homepage.
Note that this message is scenario-specific, so if you, for instance, have both an Approve and a Reject scenario on an approval stage, you can show different messages depending on what action was taken.
Workflow Dashboard
We couldn’t spruce up the workflow without giving the dashboard some love and attention too. Just like the workflow, it’s now responsive and mobile-friendly. The green stage bar indicators have been re-worked to give a clearer indication of where the workflow project is in the cycle.
- Dark green for completed stages
- Light green for the active stage
- Light grey future stages
- Dark grey for previously actioned stages, but the workflow then got rejected back to a previous stage in the path
The “Waiting” and “Needs your action” badges have been updated to match the new ones in the workflow.
The “My workflows” and “Other workflows” tabs have been replaced with a single dropdown. Now you can quickly filter on:
- Workflows that you need to action
- Where you are waiting for somebody else to action a workflow, you are involved in
- Specific other users (if enabled in the config)
The option showing only workflows the user needs to action is now the default, so they will have a less cluttered dashboard focussed on what they must action.
These, along with some other behind the scenes improvements, mean you should have a faster, better-organised dashboard.
Please Note: The underlying config of the dashboard may have to be updated to take advantage of some of these features. If you do not see it immediately, please get in touch with your account manager and they will arrange that for you.
Bigger previews for Web-to-Publish workflows
If you use the workflow in conjunction with our Web-to-Publish module, the preview of the W2P artwork is now much bigger, making it easier to review.
Improved functionality for "Send email” action
- The mail merge functionality in the “Send email” workflow action is now a dropdown under each field which supports this, and it contains not just the existing built-in mail merge fields but also custom fields displayed on that stage. Additionally, you can now also use fields that have been filled in as part of previous stages, which the dropdown also contains
- You can – and should – now select a “From” address called “Admin Email ‘From’ address” instead of a specific user. This is the primary email address configured for this in the system preferences
- You can now use formatted text such as bold and bullet points as part of email content
Workflow permissions/security
A new preference option has been added so you can lock down permissions so only users involved in each workflow can view them. Note that this is enabled by default.
Getty Images Integration
This release sees another integration added to the list, Getty Images. If you have a Getty Images account, you can now pull assets purchased on Getty Images straight into a dedicated folder in your DAM. Please speak to your account manager for more information on how this works and getting it set up.
Note that this integration is different from our other, existing Getty integration for Getty clients who have “Getty Images Media Manager”.
Bug fixes
- Downloads from workflows showing twice in reports
- Workflow form fields get cleared after bulk tagging assets
- Workflow dashboard green stage indicators not showing accurate information
- Assets from previous iterations disappear until the page is refreshed
- Sorting of custom date columns in the workflow dashboard not sorting by date
- Various security fixes