Skip to main content

How to push items linked in rendering data sources to next workflow state in Sitecore

Workflow implementation is important for content governance. When content author updates a page in Sitecore experience editor, Sitecore notifies content author to submit the page to push it to next workflow state. 

But what about the rendering data sources present on the page. Do they get pushed to next workflow state or not? 
Sitecore does push the rendering data source items present on page to next workflow state if you have the below setting set to true in your configs (which is true by default Sitecore 8.2 onwards) - 

<setting name="WebEdit.AffectWorkflowForDatasourceItems" value="true" patch:source="Sitecore.ExperienceEditor.config"/>

However, that's not all. Some of the rendering data sources may be dependent on other items (we will call them linked items), especially for container renderings (which act as container for other data items). There is no setting in Sitecore OOB that can push the linked items to next workflow state. Content authors have to manually push such data items to next workflow state which becomes problematic if they have to do it every now and then. So, if your content authors want to get these linked items pushed to next workflow state when they move page item to next workflow state, you may have to build customization. An easy way of doing this is by adding a custom action in workflow.

A custom action can be added to a command in workflow as in snapshot below - 



The Type string points to class name where the logic for the custom action will be implemented. The logic implemented in the class - 
  • gets the page item on which submit action is being called
  • gets the rendering data sources from the page item
  • gets the linked items from the rendering data source items and stores them in a list. 
  • checks if the current users has permissions to push the items to next workflow state
  • executes command to push the linked items to next workflow state.
Here goes the code implementing the logic - 

    public class DataSourceRelatedItemsWorkflowProcessing
    {
       
        public virtual void Process(WorkflowPipelineArgs args)
        {
                var dataItem = ItemConverter.Convert(args.DataItem); 
                var linkedItemList = GetItemsLinkedToDataSources(args.DataItem);
                foreach (var item in linkedItemList)
                {
                    if (item.Access.CanWrite() && (!item.Locking.IsLocked() || item.Locking.HasLock()))
                        WorkflowUtility.ExecuteWorkflowCommandIfAvailable(item, args.CommandItem, args.CommentFields);
                }                      
        }

        private List<Item> GetItemsLinkedToDataSources(Item dataItem)
        {
            var linkedItemList = new List<Item>();
            var linkFieldTypes = DataTypes.LinkedDataTypes;
            //Find all datasources of the page item
            var datasourceItems = ItemUtility.GetItemsFromLayoutDefinedDatasources(dataItem, Context.Device, dataItem.Language); ;
            foreach (var datasourceItem in datasourceItems)
            {
                foreach (Field field in datasourceItem.Fields)
                {
                    if (linkFieldTypes.Any(linkFieldType =>
                        linkFieldType.Equals(field.Type, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)))
                    {
                        var linkedItemIds = field.Value.Split('|');
                        var linkedItems = from linkedItemId in linkedItemIds
                                          let linkedItem = datasourceItem.Database.GetItem(linkedItemId, datasourceItem.Language)
                                          where linkedItem != null
                                          select linkedItem;

                        linkedItemList.AddRange(linkedItems);
                    }
                }
            }
            return linkedItemList;
        }
    }

public static class DataTypes
            {
                public static string[] LinkedDataTypes = new[]
                 {
                "Droplink",
                "Checklist",
                "Multilist",
                "Treelist",
                "QueryTreeList",
                "TreelistEx",
                "Inline Item List",
                "Multilist with Search",
                "Relative TreeList"
                };
            } 

Hope this helps to understand how we can customize Sitecore's workflow to make it more content author friendly :)


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

POPULAR POSTS

Sitecore PowerShell Script to create all language versions for an item from en version

  We have lots of media items and our business wants to copy the data from en version of media item to all other language versions defined in System/Languages. This ensures that media is available in all the languages. So, we created the below powershell script to achieve the same -  #Get all language versions defined in System/Languages $languages = Get-ChildItem /sitecore/System/Languages -recurse | Select $_.name | Where-Object {$_.name -ne "en"} | Select Name #Ensuring correct items are updated by comparing the template ID  $items = Get-ChildItem -Path "/sitecore/media library/MyProjects" -Recurse | Where-Object {'<media item template id>' -contains $_.TemplateID} #Bulk update context to improve performance New-UsingBlock (New-Object Sitecore.Data.BulkUpdateContext) { foreach($item in $items){    foreach($language in $languages){ $languageVersion = Get-Item -Path $item.Paths.Path -Language $language.Name #Check if language versi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Export Sitecore media library files to zip using SPE

If you ever require to export Sitecore media files to zip (may be to optimize them), SPE (Sitecore Powershell Extension) has probably the easiest way to do this for you. It's as easy as the below 3 steps -  1. Right click on your folder (icons folder in snap)>Click on Scripts> Click on Download 2. SPE will start zipping all the media files placed within this folder. 3. Once zipping is done, you will see the Download option in the next screen. Click Download Zip containing the media files within is available on your local machine. You can play around with the images now. Hope this helps!! Like and Share ;)
Post a Comment
Read more

Make Sitecore instance faster using Roslyn Compiler

When we install the Sitecore instance on local, the first load is slow. After each code deploy also, it takes a while for the Sitecore instance to load and experience editor to come up. For us, the load time for Sitecore instance on local machines was around 4 minutes. We started looking for ways to minimize it and found that if we update our Web.config to use Roslyn compiler and include the relevant Nugets into the project, our load times will improve. We followed the simple steps - Go to the Project you wish to add the NuGet package and right click the project and click 'Manage NuGet Packages'. Make sure your 'Package Source' is set to nuget.org and go to the 'Browse' Tab and search Microsoft.CodeDom.Providers.DotNetCompilerPlatform. Install whichever version you desire, make sure you note which version you installed. You can learn more about it  here . After installation, deploy your project, make sure the Microsoft.CodeDom.Providers.DotNetCompilerPlatform.d...
1 comment
Read more

Experience of a first time Sitecore MVP

The Journey I have been working in Sitecore for almost 10 years now. When I was a beginner in Sitecore, I was highly impressed by the incredible community support. In fact, my initial Sitecore learning path was entirely based on community written blogs on Sitecore. During a discussion with my then technology lead Neeraj Gulia , he proposed the idea that I should start giving back to developer community whenever I get chance. Just like I have been helped by many developers via online blogs, stackoverflow etc., I should also try to help others. Fast forward a few years and I met  Nehemiah Jeyakumar  (now an MVP). He had a big archive of his technical notes in the form Sitecore blogs. I realized my first blog dont have to be perfect and it can be as simple as notes to a specific problem for reference in future. That's when I probably created my first blog post on Sitecore. At that time, I didn't knew about the Sitecore MVP program. Over the years, I gained more confidence to writ...
2 comments
Read more

Clean Coding Principles in CSharp

A code shall be easy to read and understand. In this post, I am outlining basic principles  about clean coding after researching through expert recommended books, trainings and based on my experience. A common example to start with is a variable declaration like - int i  The above statement did not clarify the purpose of variable i. However,  the same variable can be declared as -  int pageNumber The moment we declared the variable as int pageNumber, our brain realized that the variable is going to store the value for number of pages. We have set the context in our brain now and it is ready to understand what the code is going to do next with these page numbers. This is one of the basic advantages of clean coding. Reasons for clean coding -  • Reading clean code is easier - Every code is revisited after certain amount of time either by the same or different developer who created it. In both the cases, if the code is unclean, its difficult to understand and u...
Post a Comment
Read more