RedDot workflow doesn’t work

What is the point of workflow? To make sure the right people approve content before the public sees it, right? So why doesn’t RedDot workflow let you do this?

An example: Your “About Us” section of your website might include press releases, your annual report, management team bios, and a map to your location, like this:



You want the right people to approve each type of content before it goes live:

• Maybe marketing approves press releases
• Your lawyers and accountants approve the annual report
• Your exec’s sign off on their bios
• IT approves the map, ‘cause it’s just a link to maps.google.com

Oh magical RedDot with your pretty graphical workflow designer, construct these workflows. What? I can’t? Why? I can only apply one workflow for each shared template? Like this, you mean?



But who do I make the approver? Marketing? Accounting? But the accountants don’t care about press releases. And I don’t want marketing to approve our financials. Oh, RedDot support, isn’t there a workaround? There is? Great. What? Just build a different template for each? But then I lose the ability to enforce common content or leverage reuse? And that’s why I bought the product?

Anyways, you get the idea. If you’re thinking about RedDot, make sure they show you how they handle this scenario. And make sure they show you the jungle of templates you need to create and maintain to make it work. Just for fun, ask them if you can have different people approve different elements on the page (say marketing for images, legal for the footer and marketing for text). Always good to watch sales engineers’ heads explode.

Or you can just commit to building a site like this:



Your visitors will love it.