One of the things that scared me to death about trying ExpressionEngine in the first place, was the lack of any real workflow tools. This was a gaping hole that I was somewhat shocked nobody was really freaking out about. Working with primarily larger corporate clients – I knew full well that this omission would eventually bite me in the ass. There is just too much process and approval that goes into decentralizing content creation for it not to.
And so a few years back – while working on a site for a large hospital I got the email I had been dreading. It was days before the launch and our client reached out to us asking how they submit something for approval.
It literally just hadn’t come up in conversation – and I knew from the tone of the email that this wasn’t something to which I could respond, “Well, erm, EE doesn’t do that.”.
Enter NSM Publish Plus
So I spent a night freaking out – starting to pull together my own little hack to make this work. I resigned myself to the fact that I was probably going to be awake for the next week trying to pull something together to get even the most basic workflow in place.
I was still pretty new to ExpressionEngine and so I didn’t immediately go out searching for an existing addon. But about halfway through building my own I was chatting with someone at a Build Guild about it and they said, “Oh, you mean like Leevi Graham’s NSM Publish Plus?”. I’m pretty sure I dropped the beer in my hand, ran home, installed it and sent Leevi a tweet threatening to hug him if/when I met him in person.
And it was good.
ExpressionEngine 2.0
When ExpressionEngine 2.0 release, I just assumed there would be some kind of workflow in place. No such luck. I waited patiently for NSM Publish Plus 2 to be announced and somewhere around Septemper of last year I couldn’t wait anymore and emailed Leevi. He told me he was planning on developing it, but there was no set launch date.
I wanted nothing more than to avoid the “pit-in-my-stomach” feeling I had the last time I was in a workflow-less environment. But I figured I’d sit tight.
In the Forums
On April 24th of this year, I posted this to the forums. It was sparked by the following quick exchange with @EllisLab.
At least I wasn’t the only person who was a little concerned with this issue.
Better Workflow
You know that feeling which follows you around when you KNOW something is going to come back to haunt you? It’s not an immediate and pressing feeling, but more like “impending doom” if I can quote from Goodfellas.
Today, finally, I can release the knot from my stomach – and send a hearty “thank you” to Electric Labs for creating their new Addon Better Workflow.
I haven’t tried it yet, but when I do – I will certainly follow this post up with my initial reactions. From what I can see in their documentation it looks fantastic.
At the very least, I am certain that Better Workflow will live up to it’s name. Then again, ANY workflow will certainly be better.
Thank You Electric Labs
Launching an addon as critical as Better Workflow be to many future ExpressionEngine builds was almost certainly an exhausting undertaking. So please join me in sending Electric Labs a thank-you tweet for their hard work. And make sure to check out their intro pricing ($15 off right now.)
