Workflow Administration - Prompt Commands

[mikesmeltzer]

Description of problem

The Platform currently has no input method (other than through code) for the admin of core workflows. This issue is a spin off of RFC #2434 to tackle the initial creation of an admin function for workflows.

Description of solution

Create a variety of Prompt commands to allow for viewing, creating, updating and deleting workflows within the Platform.

• Feel free to change the names of the commands to match the system naming conventions as necessary.

The proposed functions that are required are:

See attached Excel document for proposed functions. Note, some fields were purposely left out of the proposed functions as I believe there will be some trial and error when creating this to understand what fields are system generated, what changing the values of some fields will do, etc. but this should be a good starting point.

Description of alternatives considered

A GUI within the PersonaBar for managing workflows is the ultimate goal, however, using Prompt as a first step will allow us to get the functions correct and released in a more timely fashion. A subsequent follow-up issue will be created to then take the shared released code from the Prompt commands and connect a GUI to it.

[mikesmeltzer]

Workflow Prompt Commands Sample.xlsx

[david-poindexter]

@mikesmeltzer great job on this - looking forward to getting started! @ohine can you assign this issue to me as well? Mike and I will be collaborating on this one. Thanks!

[valadas]

Question, if the APIs for managing workflows is in the prompt module, could another persona bar module (like site settings) use those APIs even if they are in another module or is there some kind of protection against that?

[mikesmeltzer]

@valadas It is my understanding that you could technically use the prompt commands from other solutions. That being said, these commands are only for the creation/admin of a workflow and not assigning to it something to actually work - if that makes sense.

So I'm not sure if these would apply to other areas but perhaps you are looking to add actual workflow capabilities to other areas? What were you thinking?

[valadas]

I was just thinking about making a Persona Bar module for managing workflows, I have not used that much but I think we need a UI for managing the actual possible workflows, then the modules would need to do their own thing with them.

So my question is if we build the management of workflows into Prompt, can the persona bar UI module reuse the promp apis that connect with the server or each persona bar module needs its own apis? In other words, can one persona bar module use the api of another persona bar module get and save information to the server?

[mikesmeltzer]

Gotcha. Our original intent was to do the prompt extensions first to get the functionality right and then look to add a UI for it. If you want do to the Persona Bar module that's great.

It would be great if both share the same code. While I don't think you'd want to necessarily use the Prompt extension itself, we can put the code into a neutral spot so that your solution could use it too without rebuilding the wheel.

[valadas]

So it would be a Dnn API and both prompt and the UI module would use the same endpoints right.

[mikesmeltzer]

Ideally something along those lines yes. We can find the appropriate place to put it - I don't think we should be duplicating code within the platform.

[valadas]

I was just wondering if there was something special about PersonaBarApiController vs DnnApiController that would prevent reusing the api from one PB module in another, I did not have time to read those details yet.