Tainacan Beta 0.21.14 – New Status: “Pending”

The version 0.21.x cycle is nearing its conclusion and while we are actively working on version 1.0.0, we have a small update with two more “technical” new features and a number of bug fixes.

What’s new?

New Status: “Pending”

Expert users know that there are 5 “statuses” that a Tainacan item can take on in its management cycle:

1. Automatic draft;
2. Draft;
3. Private;
4. Public;
5. Trash;

Traditionally we don’t think of the Trash and Automatic Draft as statuses, although they are there. Most commonly, we use Draft to edit an item that isn’t ready yet and then, when it finally is, we publish it as Public or Private (only logged-in users with the appropriate permissions can see Private items, but they are still “published”).

This version introduces an intermediate status, Pending. In this status, the item is not yet published (not even privately) and therefore does not yet have its own page (with a reserved address and URL/slug). It is therefore similar to a draft, although it has an important difference: it validates the mandatory metadata. In other words, when saving a Draft item, the user doesn’t need to fill in all the fields, as the item is still “just a draft”. But if you save an item as Pending, although it is not yet ready for publication, it is – at least from the author’s point of view – “ready” for a review. It can therefore only be saved with mandatory metadata filled in.

And how would this review take place? Tainacan does not impose restrictions on a review flow. Once an item is Pending, this label can serve merely for the author’s own classification (something like, “I’ll look at these later before publishing”). But if that user’s profile doesn’t have permission to publish items, then the Pending status becomes a way for a user who does have such permission (an editor, or reviewer, if you prefer), to know that that item is ready for their review. But it’s important to make it clear: even if an item is Pending, it can still be edited and updated by the user who created it, or by anyone else who has that permission.

The implications of this new status are the presence of new elements in the interface. You will see tabs and status options in the lists and forms of items, collections and taxonomies.

New permissions: “Edit private items” and “Remove private items”

When we reviewed our permissions in order to maintain greater compatibility with those offered by WordPress for posts and pages, we noticed that the ability to edit or remove private items was linked directly to the permission to edit other users’ items. Although this association may make sense in some scenarios, we believe it is worth separating the functionalities, so that, for example, a user can edit their private items without being able to edit other users’ items. So now, in the list of permissions for each user role, you’ll see these two new options.

If your users were Administrators or Editors with higher level permissions (such as “Manage the collection”) you won’t need to make any changes. However, if you have built user profiles with greater granularity, such as being able to edit other people’s items but not being able to edit public items, it’s worth taking a look at these settings to better suit what you want in your repository.

Improvements

Hierarchy of permissions in the user role form

A small adjustment, but one that should help to better understand the permissions relationships when it comes to editing items, has been brought to the user role form. When accessing the area for editing collection item permissions, some checkboxes are interdependent.

The labels have also been adapted to reinforce the nature of these permissions. We’re updating our documentation on the subject on the Wiki, but it never hurts to reinforce it:

Visualization

• By default, the user can see everyone’s Public items;
• By default, the user can also see Private, Pending or Draft items that they have created;
• If the user has the View others’ private items permission, they can see Private items created by others.

Editing

• If the user has the Edit Items permission, they can create and save Automatic Draft, Draft and Pending items, as long as they are their own. They will also be able to edit (but not publish to the public) Private items that are theirs. Without this permission, you can’t edit or remove anything, even if you have any of the following permissions:
  • To publish items as Public, the user must have the Publish items permission. Without it, they can’t publish their own items.
  • If the user has the Edit public items permission, they can edit Public items, initially their own.
  • If the user has the Edit private items permission, they can edit Private items, initially their own.
  • If the user has the Edit other people’s items permission, they can edit other people’s Private, Automatic Draft, Draft and Pending items. When combined with Edit public items or Edit private items, they can also edit the respective statuses of other users’ posts.
  • If the user has the Delete items permission, they can save their items as Trash, except for those that are published as Public or Private. Without this permission, no deletion is made, even if they have any of the following permissions.
    • If the user has the Delete items from others permission, they can save Automatic Draft, Draft or Pending items from others as Trash. Without this permission, you can’t remove other people’s posts.
    • If the user has the Delete public items permission, they can save other users’ Public items as Trash.
    • If the user has the Delete private items permission, they can save other users’ Private items as Trash.

Other improvements

• Allows clickable links within the description of the Taxonomy Term and the Collection;
• Improved translation of some user role editing components;
• Automatically switches tabs in the term insertion component when a new term is inserted;
• Displays the Private status tab even when the user does not have permission to view private items (this is because they can view private items created by themselves);
• Improved detection of filter panel status in admin for adjusting Masonry view modes. Also supports line breaks in these descriptions;

Big fixes

• Fixes URL type metadata export, which was clearing links;
• Corrects adjacent links in the context of the list of term items;
• Fixed minor errors in the collection editing form;
• Corrected inconsistent styles in the “Section steps” of the item submission form;
• Fixes errors in entering relationships within the bulk edit form;
• Fixed error where numeric metadata did not accept zero (0) when it was mandatory;

For developers

• New get_tainacan_item_gallery filter allows developers to modify, via plugin or theme, the code that generates the media gallery for Tainacan items;

Get it now!

Version 0.21.14 of Tainacan is now available for download from the WordPress plugin repository:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/tainacan