During this week’s meeting, we discussed modifying our workflows, both to add a “Report Theme” workflow, and to add an auto-approval workflow for updates to approved, live Themes. As adding these elements will essentially require a complete rewrite of the Theme Review process workflows, we decided that now would be a good time to review/discuss both our existing workflow, and the proposed additions. The thinking is that, if we’re going to start from scratch, we might as well make sure that we’re building the best possible workflow, rather than continue to “bolt on” pieces to a system that already resembles something created by Dr. Frankenstein.

To that end, I have roughed-out a workflow diagram that shows both our current workflows, and the new/proposed additional workflows. To help make the workflow more understandable, the various actions are sub-divided. At the top are user/developer actions that set things in motion. After that are a series of system actions that lead to the tickets. After that are the actions of the Theme Review Team that process the tickets. And finally, there are the system actions that make Themes live in the directory.

Note that the existing workflow is in black-line, and the new/proposed workflows are in red-line. The “Report Theme” button that we discussed during the meeting would fall under the “Live Theme Reported” box in the upper right corner:

Current and proposed workflows for Theme submission, review, approval, update, and reporting

So, please review and discuss. Do the proposed workflows make sense? Are there ways that we can improve them? While we welcome feedback on our existing workflows (in particular: does the diagram accurately reflect our current workflows), at this point, we are primarily looking for feedback on the proposed workflows for the new functionality: the Theme reporting functionality, and the auto-approval of updates to live Themes.

#workflow