adhoc workflow plugin state reset problem
Asked by John Edstrom:

I'm using the adhoc Editor and staff approval workflow in a space. I made some mistakes in setting up so that only editors could see in-process pages and anyone could see only published pages. So, I re-initialized the states of all of the pages in the space to Draft, with the override option.

The problem is that although those pages that had been published were re-set to Draft, but the Published version did not go away. Looking at the timestamp on the schisophrenic pages showed that they were the same document, but the Published ghost page was visible to everyone.

In the space workflow-report ALL pages are shown as Draft (as expected), NO pages are shown as Published (as expected), but, when I go to the page itself, the page is marked Published and the muted Draft link is still present, as if nothing had changed.

If I modify and publish one of these anomalous pages workflow acts as expected and I have one Published page and no Draft pages.

It seems as if there is a residual flag somewhere marking the content Published that isn't cleaned on space-wide reset.

Is there a cache somewhere I need to purge to remove the "ghost" Published pages? Can I flip a bit in the database so the same document doesn't get shown twice?


Answers:
author: Ulrich Kuhnhardt [Comalatech]
body: Ok John,

here is what you can do to reset a pages state history:

* Remove the space workflow
* Go to the page that needs resetting the status history
* Add the Editor and staff approval workflow to the page
  * now the page has an individual workflow
* Edit the page's workflow - <http://cl.ly/image/2D1o221G0z29>
* remove the workflow, check 'Remove history' <http://cl.ly/image/1J3X0Q3C2b1f>

Repeat this for all the pages that need a reset.

When finshed, attach the space wide workflow again.

Pls let me know if that helped.

comments: author: John Edstrom
body: Yep, that fixed it. Thanks a lot. Never in a million years would I have thought of this strategy.

When I was going through the drill I noticed that a workflow notification was stalled in the workflow notification queue too. I'd have thought the task assignment queue would have been purged when all of the page states were reset, but it didn't seem to matter.


author: Shane Fisher
body: How do you do this in the latest version? I can't find these options anywhere


author: Ulrich Kuhnhardt [Comalatech]
body: Hello John,

re-setting pages to draft status does not remove the approval history. If you go to a page in 'draft' with a history (ie. this page had been published) and view the page history then you'll see all the previous states.

I think the feature you are looking for is to

* reset the page state
* wipe all history

Consequently public users would not see any pages, even if they had been published before.


author: John Edstrom
body: Hi Ulrich, I'm using:

Confluence: v 4.3.3

workflow: v 4.0.1, "Editor and staff approval workflow"


author: John Edstrom
body: Hi Ulrich, I'm using:

Confluence: v 4.3.3

workflow: v 4.0.1, "Editor and staff approval workflow"


author: Ulrich Kuhnhardt [Comalatech]
body: Hi John,

I understand that after re-initializing pages to draft they retain a published version.

We're trying to reproduce this problem locally. Could you pls provide us with the following information

* Confluence version
* Workflows version
* The workflow you are using for the space

Thanks for your help, Regards, Ulrich


author: Ulrich Kuhnhardt [Comalatech]
body: Hi John,

I understand that after re-initializing pages to draft they retain a published version.

We're trying to reproduce this problem locally. Could you pls provide us with the following information

* Confluence version
* Workflows version
* The workflow you are using for the space

Thanks for your help, Regards, Ulrich


Tags: adhoc-workflows