Plone is an open source content management system that can help your organization save money, improve efficiency, and enhance customer satisfaction through online forms and electronic workflow / business processing.

1. Easy Online Business
Processes with Plone
Forms and Workflow
for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Canuckistan
T. Kim Nguyen <nguyen@uwosh.edu>
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
http://uwosh.edu/ploneprojects

2. Don’t be a chump
• Filling out paper forms: BAD
• Tracking / distributing / filing
paper forms: BAD

3. Online forms + workflow processing
Be a 21st Century Hero

4. Fast
• Online forms = fast, accurate data
• Online forms workflow processing =
• email notifications
• dashboard & collections to list forms in process
• fast search/lookup

5. Cost Savings
freeing up staff (e.g. half a person’s time)
allow lean organizations to remain effective
make your office more productive

6. Time Savings
physically moving paper
forms between buildings
!
making copies to distribute to
3rd parties
!
locating paper forms in
process
!
filing/storage
!
retrieving filed papers

7. Frustration Savings
• “Did you get the form I
submitted?”
• “Where is my form in
the process?”
• “Why is it taking so
long?”
• No more data entry,
duplication, or errors

8. What tools
do you
need?
things Plone ships
with
!
&
!
some add-ons

9. Add-ons
• PloneFormGen (Products.PloneFormGen)!
• D2C (uwosh.pfg.d2c)!
• Vocabularies (Products.ATVocabularyManager)
• Data grid field (Products.PFGDataGrid)
• Workflow manager (plone.app.workflowmanager)!
• Big transition buttons (uwosh.transitionbuttons)
• Templated emails (collective.easytemplate)

10. PloneFormGen
• drag & drop fields into place
• sophisticated defaults,
validation, overrides
• sends email, saves data
• can auto-populate name &
email address, other user
attributes

11. D2C: form ➡ real content objects
• objects are editable & you can assign a workflow

12. ATVocabularyManager
define preset lists of values users choose from in form
selection/multiselection fields

13. Data grid field
• you define the columns
• users dynamically add & remove rows of input

14. Workflow Manager
• Workflow is everywhere in Plone, so let’s use it
• But first let's put a prettier face on it

15. Before… (ZMI)

17. …and After:
States

18. Transitions

19. Diagram generator
!
!
• coming soon: diagram-centric UI! (Sam Schwartz)

20. • customize state and transition security (roles, permissions,
groups)

21. • Easily create email notifications on transitions

23. Security
(Roles and Permissions)
• who can see and edit submitted forms?
• who can initiate transitions?

24. Simple security
Business process owner ➡ Manager Users ➡ Anonymous or Authenticated

25. More complex security
Business process
owner ➡ Manager
Office staff ➡ new
custom roles
!
- front desk,
- office manager
- director
- faculty advisor
Users ➡ Authenticated

26. Big *ss buttons
• uwosh.transitionbuttons by Sam
Schwartz

27. Templated emails
• collective.easytemplate
• use powerful expressions
in emails: recipients,
subject, body
• templated pages and
portlets too
• {{ list_folder("courses") }}!
• {{ context.Title().decode("utf-8") }}!
• {{ context.getBody() }}!
• {{ context.absolute_url() }}!
• {{ context.aq_parent.sister }}
{% if portal_state.anonymous() %}!
anon!
{% else %}!
logged in!
{% endif %}
{{ query({"portal_type":"News Item","sort_on":"Date","sort_order":"reverse","sort_limit":
3,"review_state":"published"}) }}!

28. Tools (included with Plone)
• Products.CMFPlacefulWorkflow
• collections
• portal_catalog
• portlets
• dashboard
• search
• comments (plone.app.discussion *OR* workflow state change
comment)

29. CMFPlacefulWorkflow
• activate to create a workflow policy (assign a
custom workflow) in a specific D2C folder
• (not needed if you tell D2C to create a new content
type)

30. Collections
simple “dashboard”: folder containing several collections

31. Display ➡ All content

32. Catalog indexes
& collection criteria
• You want to create a new collection criterion, e.g. “student job
type”
• see “how to add fields from a uwosh.pfg.d2c adapter to collection
criteria” http://www.uwosh.edu/ploneprojects/docs/developers/ploneformgen-fu/uwosh.pfg.d2c-collection-
fields
• ZMI: add a Script (Python) to return the attribute value if it’s
there
• portal_catalog ➡ Indexes: add FieldIndex
• Site Setup ➡ Collections, All fields, check box

34. Use portlets!
• static text portlets to display general links
• collection portlets and “recent items” portlets
• content type portlets: display links or help specific to a
content type (Site Setup ➡ Types)
• group portlets: display links or help specific to the logged
in person’s group membership(s) (Site Setup ➡ Users and
Groups ➡ Groups tab)
• use Plone’s built-in dashboard (also supports group
portlets!)

35. Search

36. Plone’s built-in commenting
• threaded commenting, email notification, moderation, captchas

38. Workflow transition comments
• add a comment as long as a transition occurs
• visible through State ➡ Advanced…
• plaintext only

42. Landing Pages

44. User Instructions

47. Examples
• Study abroad application, program management
(Office of International Education)
• Student advising worksheet
• Student job application (Div. of Information
Technology)
• IRB approval (Office of Grants)
• Contract management (College of Nursing)

48. Study Abroad
5,984 processed
since 2008
!
16 workflow states
!
savings: $25 per
app + 0.5 FTE per
year = 2.5 FTE = ~
$200,000 total
savings

49. Advising Worksheet
up to 150-200 filled out per day…
12,000 since August 2013

50. Student IT Job Applications
442 filled out since March
2013

51. Institutional Review Board Approval
180 fields
!
60 states
!
114 transitions

52. Contract Management
Dexterity content type
!
70 contracts (since Oct. ‘14)
!
PDFs, contact info, renewal
dates

53. PloneFormGen or Dexterity?

54. PloneFormGen:
pros / cons
• Good:
• entirely through the web
• robust, time-tested
• easy to specify validators,
default values & expressions
• easy to add adapters: save
data, mailer, custom script, D2C
• thank you page
• default form view looks good
acceptable
• Not so good:
• Archetypes:
• slower? e.g. form with 634
fields 
• going away eventually?

55. Dexterity:
pros / cons
• Good:
• through the web type
(“form”) creation/
modification
• no need for D2C to create
content items!
• easy to enable Folderish
behaviour
• Not so good (for users/
integrators):
• still developer-oriented,
requires file system
coding!
• no TTW vocabularies,
validators, mailers, custom
scripts, default expressions
• no TTW rich text labels, data
grid fields, nested field sets

57. Wishlist:
improve (PFG & D2C) or Dexterity
• PloneFormGen: more layouts, e.g. grids, two-column... or dynamic layouts a la
collective.cover?
• D2C:
• make it easy to enable Folderish behaviour
• checkboxes to automatically add catalog indexes & collection criteria for
selected form fields
• Dexterity:
• improve TTW user/integrator experience
• TTW vocabularies
• ..ie. create a Dexterity equivalent of PloneFormGen?

58. Workflow Manager
enhancements
• Better UI for creating templated email notifications
• Expose transition guard expressions & create
expression builder
• *** New UI: directly manipulate the diagram (Sam
Schwartz) ***

61. Next Steps
• Try it!
• Questions?
• nguyen@uwosh.edu
• http://uwosh.edu/ploneprojects