Hi,
For 1) - We have a plan (top priority) to do this feature, so I think it will come out soon
For 2) - You cannot do it within the content approval sequence

Hi Tom

For item 1) do/can the reviewers use the built in comparison tools to see what's changed? I also recently created a red/green compare option with this kind of comparison in mind: https://www.david-tec.com/2018/03/visual-compare-option-available-for-episerver-11/. Your implementation partner/development team can install this for you. 

David

Hi David/Linh,

Thanks very much for your responses.

For item 1, the reviewer could use the comparison tool - but in our instance we have a lot of long copy webpages - and sometimes all we will do is add a comma, or a fullstop. All our changes must go through some form of workflow. When we are just adding in a comma, it's so much easier for a reviewer to know what to expect. Meaning they do not need to trawl through the rest of the content checking for errors, sourcing etc which can take hours.

The red/green compare option might work - I'll need to look into that in further detail.

For 2 - is there any way we can tie in the expiry date of a page to the Content Approval Sequence? That is the final hurdle that i need to overcome to be able to use native episerver capability. Rather than getting my developers to build custom fixes .

Thanks,

Tom

Hello Tom

Out the box the expiry isn't set when content is approved. However your developers can hook into various content events such as the "Approved" or "Published" events and programatically insert/update the expiry date when they occur perhaps based on a "review in number of days" property of the content. Worth bearing in mind that "Approved" fires when the approval sequence is complete but the content is not yet live while the "Published" fires when the content is actually published.

David

Thanks David - I will speak to my devleopers about whether this is possible.

Regarding the original issue (sending an initial comment when starting the content approval sequence) - do you know when this will be released? Linh's comment led to believe it's not that far away?

Hi Tom,
I think in the end of this year or the begining of the next year it should be released.

Hi Linh,

Do you have an update on when a content editor can begin an approval sequence containing an initial comment?

You mentioned above it could be at the end of this year, so was hoping for an update?

Alternatively do you have a roadmap or anything that i can check for status updates to see how close this is to being delivered?

Thanks,

Tom

We have started to work on this feature and try our best to release it asap. So within a month, maybe.

Hi Linh,

Has the update for when a content editor can begin an approval sequence containing an initial comment been released yet?

Also, does the native approval sequence work with versioning? For example, we sign off our content only at page level, not block level. So if a page has previously been published using the approval sequence, are the comments, dates and people all recorded for an audit trail?

Finally does the approval sequence hook in to Active Directory to look up users?

Thanks,
Tom

Hi Tom,

Comments for content is going to be in the release 11.14.0 https://world.episerver.com/blogs/Ben-McKernan/Dates/2019/1/comments-for-content/
The "Important node" section in the blog post answers your other question, I guess.

Great - thanks for letting me know Linh :)

EPiServer.CMS.UI 11.14.0 is currently avialable on the Epi NuGet feed.

Hi,

One final question on the native content approval. 

I've spoken to my developers about your native capability, and they have advised that you only allow sign off at block level, rather than page level. Is that correct?

We only sign off content at page level. So we'd need to prevent the publish and approve options being visible for blocks. Can you tell me if that is possible?

Thanks,
Tom

Hello Tom

Approval sequences can be applied at any level within Episerver. So you could apply them on pages, blocks or any combination of both. The documentation explains how to set up and configure approval sequences:

http://webhelp.episerver.com/latest/cms-admin/managing-approval-sequences.htm 

David