I am just wondering how flexible the workflow module is for custom workflow?

Reading the documentation, it seems to be geared around two- or three-step authorisation of content. Workflow can go way beyond that, with records going through many stages and states and sub-states.

Taking a simple case of a sales order: an order my need to be authorised by the client, checked by the finance manager, put into a queue for stock to be picked, put into a queue for packing, checked, shipped, tracked, and finally closed. Each stage could be handled by different groups of people. At each stage, only certain actions can be performed, so that the packer can only tick the items that they have packed, the authoriser can only authorise or reject, and not change anything on the order, etc.

Is the workflow module suitable for that kind of process? I'm actually wanting to implement something much more complicated than this, but the sales order example above should give a flavour for the kind of process I am thinking of. I guess it could be described as N-step workflow..?

-- Jason

Ah, okay. I guess it was the name of the module "workflow" that left me thinking more generically beyond its intended scope.

Maybe there will be scope for a future "workflowengine" module to handle the actual workflow actions, while article authorisation would be just one of many plugins to that module. We have a great module to start with anyway :-)

Thanks,

-- Jason