The Publish Screen and Publishing Workflow

Approve, publish, and export content

Bulk publishing operations occur in the Publish screen. Documents, folders, and publications can be published to the web (opened to the public). Having the right to publish depends on your role. If you are an Author, you may request approval of your content, and the responsible Editor will review it. In order to make changes to the publicly visible site you need at least an Editor role.

Since the operations allowed depend on the role you play, the Publish screen changes accordingly. Authors and Editors see different controls.

Fig. 1  Editors publish screen.

Author requests for approval

There are two ways to request approval, in the Publish Screen of a document, and via a bulk operation in the Publish screen of a Folder or Publication.

The advantage of using the Publish screen of a document is an Author can include a message that is received by the Editor. Likewise, the Editor can reply if for some reason the request is rejected. If Silva is setup with an Email Message Service, these messages will be sent by email, including an automatic link to the corresponding location. When using the Publish screen of a container, an automatically generated message is sent to the other party.

The following steps describe the process for an Author. (Fig. 2)

1. Go to the Publish screen of the container where your content is located. The tab is located in the top navigation bar.
   
2. Place a checkmark next to the items you want approved. You can use the “select all” selector (alt-a) as well.
3. Fill in the “publish time”. If you wish you can fill in “expiration time”. See the section on publish time below for an explanation.
4. Click the request approval button (alt-r) to send the approval request to the responsible Editor. Please check the feedback on the returning page regarding the success or failure of sending your request.
5. If the Editor approves or rejects your request, you will be notified. At any time in between you can redraw your request by visiting the location and clicking the revoke
   approval button (alt-v).

Fig. 1  Authors publish screen.

Editor publishes content

1. Go to the Publish screen located in the top navigational bar.
   
2. Place a checkmark next to the items you wish to publish. You can use the “select all” selector (alt-a) as well. (Fig. 1)
   
3. Fill in a publication date (time is optional), or check the “publish right now” selector, which will use the current time as publish date. If necessary, fill in an expiration date and set it by checking “set expiration time?”.
4. Click the open to public button (alt-o).
5. Check the returning screen for success or failure of your approval.
6. Any time after approval you can intercept the publication via the revoke approval button (alt-v). In this case it's a good idea to do this via the Publish screen of the content, since you can fill in a message in the “Message to author(s)” textarea to inform the author about the reason for the revocation.
7. Alternatively you can close public content via the close (alt-c) button if you decide it should taken offline.

Notes

• You can make new versions of closed content later on.
• Authors may make new versions (editable copies) to work on.
• The difference between revoking approval and closing is that the link (re)coloration indicates a problem with the document. If approval is revoked, the link turns red. Closed documents turn gray, which denotes the normal end of the life cycle of that document.
• If you use the “select all” selector (alt-a) to publish everything, remember that publications are not transparent. The publish action does not affect content within a nested publication. You must publish the contents of each publication separately.

Publication and expiration date

If your content is approved, it will become publicly visible only within the time frame between publish time and expiration time. If you do not give an expiration date, the published content will remain public forever, or until someone closes it. Note that you have to check the “set expiration time?” checkbox when you want to set an expiration date, otherwise the expiration date will be ignored.

Content that is approved or published can have its expiration date settings changed. Fill in the new dates (time is optional) and click the set timing button (alt-s).

Publication state of Publications and Folders

You cannot publish publications and folders. Instead their publication state is managed via the content. A folder is considered published if it contains published content.

Reading information in the Publish screen

If you want to check the condition of the content, you'll find the information in the listing table of the Publish screen. This does not depend on your role; the information is always visible. In the listing ids are shown on the left (note that only publicly visible items appear, no folders or assets). Titles are indented to show the publication structure.

The relevant status information can be found in the three rightmost columns of the listing table (discussed from left to right).

Revision column

Displays information about the current version. The possible states are:

• draft: (link color is red, a ‘stop’ color) the content is waiting for approval.
• pending: (link color is dark yellow, like a stoplight) the approval task is on some Editor's To-Do list.
• approved: (link color is green, a ‘go’) the content has been approved, but is not published yet. (You must revoke the approval before re-editing it.)
• published: (link color is blue, a normal link) the content is visible for the public.
• closed: (link color is gray) indicates that there is no new version and the public version is closed. You can create a new version by clicking the edit link, or use the new version button (alt-n) for a bulk operation.

Publication due column

If a there is a publish time set in the future, the date is listed. Otherwise the cell is empty.

Expiration due column

If a there is an expiration time set, the date is listed. Otherwise the cell is empty.

Published column

Information about the published, non-editable version. This may contain a blue “published” link for currently public versions, a gray “closed” note for closed or expired versions, or be empty if there is no public version. If the content is published then it’s linked to the publicly visible page.

Versioning of documents

Once content is published a new version can be created. The published version stays online for the public, while the editable version can be worked on, or approved with a publication date in the future.

When published, content cannot be reverted back to an editable state. The content can only be closed, which takes it offline, or a new version can be created.

Content that is closed can be re-published directly, without having to first make a new version.

Exporting content

The entire text of publications, folders, and documents can be exported as Silva XML, or – if the Docma server is running on your network – as an MSWord document, which can be edited and imported. These activities occur in the Export screen.