For a client who needed a solid and easy workspace center for multiple writers and publishers I enhanced the default versioning / workspace part of TYPO3. The code is still a bit messy but I’m working on a cleaner version.

We only needed two levels of authorisation instead of three, so in this case the reviewer is also a publisher. Since both the writers and the publisher in this case are not computer whiz kids the screen has to be as clean as posible. Futhermore it is neccessary to quickly see comments writers made for publishers. The pagebrowser now only shows when there actually are more pages neccessary. Only admins can now switch between workspaces because this can only go wrong once it’s set correctly. (The tab is still visible in the screenshot, not in real version)

I also did some changes in the versioning module which can be accessed through the list view by clicking on the version icon, but for now this is just empty since it didn’t add any value for the client and only made things more complicated.

I want to share a screenshot with you guys of a publisher who’s about to check for new changes and perhaps accept them. As you will see this screenshots looks a lot cleaner and easier to use. It’s not The big breakthrough on workspace handling but it’s a start.

Michael Cannon also wrote relevant posts on this subject:
Increase TYPO3 Workspace Relation Limits
Customize the TYPO3 Workspace Notification Messages
NR Easy Workspace

Update:

• Records which are still in “creating” stage are unable to be deleted or rejected.
• Buttons “Preview workspace” and “Publish workspace” are now locallang and are configurable through User TsConfig: workspace.showPublishAll = 1 / workspace.showPreviewLink = 1
• Button “Preview workspace” is now a direct link to the frontend instead of an url-generator.

Click to enlarge!

Before:

After: