Inform Authors of Scheduled Publishing

Question

The use case I'm investigating are components or pages that are scheduled to be generated and published at a later time.

Aside from Tridion workflow (to restrict authors from editing non-approved changes), I'm considering approaches that could help remind authors when they start editing an item that is scheduled for publish (regardless of when it's content is generated).

I'm thinking of two options:

1. Event system to check the publishing queue when an author starts editing an item. Would this create a performance issue if we check every time an author opens a component?
2. When publishing, "flag" future published items (possibly in AppData). Components would check this when being opened.

The simplest approach is probably training, communicating changes, and checking the publishing queue. But thoughts on a way to at least "nudge" authors when they start editing items that are scheduled for publishing?

I'm not looking to restrict the phased scenarios, just a way to inform authors of what they're doing. Similar to that warning when you change schemas. :-)

Answer 1

I think the least disruptive way would be to:

• Store the "scheduled publish date/time" in the Item's AppData - use Event System, make sure to use an asynchronous event handler
• CME/XPM extension that checks current date/time against this value in AppData, and if applicable shows a message in the UI stating that "this item is scheduled to publish in 10 seconds, better hurry up!"

Polling the Publish Queue on item load will take a toll on your system, I would advise against this. Your CME/XPM extension doesn't really need more than Javascript, so following Albert Romkes' approach for GUI-less extensions would get you there relatively quickly.