Can you get experience manager to publish minor revisions? (items in workflow)

Question

We are having an issue with using Experience Manager with items in workflow. Basically we can create, edit and publish things fine in Experience Manager (on a staging site) right up until the point they enter workflow. At this point it is still editable (if the task is assigned to you and the task has been started) which again is what we want and what we would expect. It shows the user the information they would expect to see (via session preview) and also saves and updates the Component correctly.

The issue however is that when Finish Activity is clicked it republishes the last major version of the edited Component rather than the users minor version. This happens even though the Component has has reached the minimum approval status for the Publication.

I have tried adding a step in the workflow to publish to the staging website which works, but this is then overwritten by the last major version as soon as the item has been edited and Finish Editing has been clicked.

So the question is really can you get Experience Manager to publish minor revisions when Finish Editing is clicked? (Obviously provided it meets minimum approval status)

Answer 1

You could hook the publish event using an event system (note: this untested code!):

public MyConstructor()
{
    EventSystem.Subscribe<IdentifiableObject, PublishEventArgs>(SetInWorkflowPublishFlag, EventPhases.Initiated);
}

private void SetInWorkflowPublishFlag (IdentifiableObject subject, PublishEventArgs args, EventPhases phase)
{
    args.PublishInstruction.ResolveInstruction.IncludeWorkflow = true;
}

Answer 2

As a follow-up answer to this post, in more recent versions of Tridion Sites, you can enable the collaborative workflow setting to allow users to read the in-progress version of items, assuming they have access (permission) to the item.

This also affects things like Experience Manager and publishing. See the Documentation Center on how to enable collaborative workflow.

Answer 3

I'm using very similar code, with a slight alteration (to limit as much as possible to XPM publish requests only)

private void SetInWorkflowPublishFlag(IdentifiableObject subject, PublishEventArgs args, EventPhases phase)
{
   //TODO: Review if can determine if initiated by XPM vs. Person more accurately
   if (args.Targets.Count() == 1 && args.Targets.First().Title.ToLower().Contains("staging"))
   {
      if(subject is Component)
         args.PublishInstruction.ResolveInstruction.IncludeWorkflow = true;
   }
}

Is this question Is Publish Triggered by Experience Manager I am looking to find a more reliable approach