Welcome to Corporate Marketing

Web & Design Services

Using Contribute:

Approvals & Collaboration | Text Formatting | Linking & Navigation | Using Tables | Using CSS

Approvals and Collaboration

Contribute facilitates implementing approval and collaboration procedures where no predefined workflows exist. Within the flexible approval system, we are able to control precisely who edits and publishes web pages.

Users can easily send their content to others for review, including the webteam, for example, whose task it is to perform a technical review before the content can go live.

A key component of the approval system in the Draft Console (see Figure 1). This summarizes the work in progress, including the status of all drafts and reviews.

Figure 1. Examining all the work in progress on a website in the Draft Console

Sending a Document Draft for Review

The draft review process in Contribute begins when a writer sends a draft to another user:

1. Click the Send for Review button in the toolbar. The Send for Review dialog box appears.
2. Select whichever Send for Review option is applicable, scroll down to pick your chosen reviewer from the list
3. Write a summary of the changes made in the "Description of changes" window
4. Click the Send button.

Figure 2a. Approved publishers names would have been communicated to users via email by the Web team. If not and one is required please send an email to webteam@uel.ac.uk

Figure 2b. Confirmation dialog box after sending a document for review

Writers can undo the send operation by clicking the Undo Send button located on the toolbar.

Reviewing a Draft

Once a writer has sent a draft for review, the reviewer sees the message box (see Figure 3) and the file appears in the reviewer's Contribute Pages panel (F4 from keyboard) (see Figure 4).

Figure 3. Notification of incoming file to review

Figure 4. Pages panel

Reviewers can click the Draft History button in the Draft Status panel at the bottom of the window to see the latest comments that have been added for that particular draft (see Figure 5).

Figure 5. Viewing the draft's status

Reviewers may also receive e-mail notification from the sender, alerting them that they have a draft ready for review. This occurs if the sender selects the Notify Recipients Through E-mail option in the Send to Other User dialog box that appears when they click the Send for Review button. The Web Publishing System also sends draft notifications by e-mail automatically.

Selecting the document that needs attention displays a series of buttons on the toolbar, which include the option to edit the draft document (see Figure 6).

Figure 6. Review buttons in Contribute

If deemed necessary, the reviewer can make further changes to the draft by clicking the Edit Draft button on the toolbar. Once they complete their review, they can either publish the draft by clicking the Publish button or click Send for Review if they want someone else to review the draft prior to publishing.

Manually Refreshing the Drafts Panel

Although performing actions such as editing a draft, sending a draft for review, or publishing a draft refreshes the Contribute Drafts panel automatically, there are certain occasions when you may need to do it manually-for example, if you leave Contribute running and someone sends you a draft to review.

To refresh the Drafts panel manually, select View > Refresh Drafts or click the Refresh button on the Drafts panel. Whichever method you use, Contribute synchronizes all drafts and displays the new draft.

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© 2008