Life cycle

Life cycle states

Metadata records have a lifecycle that typically goes through one or more states. For example, when a record is:

  • created and edited by an Editor user it is in the Draft state.
  • reviewed by a Content Reviewer user it would typically be in a Submitted state.
  • completed and corrected by the Content Reviewer it would be in the Approved state and may be made available for casual search and harvest by assigning privileges to the catalog All group.
  • superseded or replaced and the state would be Retired.

The catalog has (an extensible) set of states that a metadata record can have:

  • Unknown - this is the default state - nothing is known about the status of the metadata record.
  • Draft - the record is under construction or being edited.
  • Submitted - the record has been submitted for approval to a content review.
  • Approved - the content reviewer has reviewed and approved the metadata record.
  • Rejected - the content reviewer has reviewed and rejected the metadata record.
  • Retired - the record has been retired.

To enable workflow and change the status from Unknown to Draft, click the enable workflow button in the metadata view:

../../_images/workflow-enable.png

Draft status can also be set by default for newly created records in defined groups. For this check Administration > Settings > Metadata Workflow and define the list of groups.

Once enabled, the different states can be set. Status can be assigned to metadata records individually.

../../_images/workflow-update-status-popup.png

Choose the new state, add an optional comment and click save:

../../_images/workflow-update-status.png

Todo

Add support for a selected set of records.

When in Draft, an editor can change states to:

  • Unknown
  • Draft
  • Submitted

Other states can be managed by Reviewers or Administrators.

Status actions

The status values shown above are held in a database table called MetadataStatus. Extra states can be added to this table if required.

There are two status change action hooks (in Java) that can be used by sites to provide specific behaviours:

  • statusChange - This action is called when status is changed by a user eg. when Draft records are set to Submitted and could be used for example to send notifications to other users affected by this change.
  • onEdit - This action is called when a record is edited and saved and could be used for example to reset records with an Approved status to Draft status.

A default set of actions is provided. These can be customized or replaced by sites that wish to provide different or more extensive behaviour.

A default pair of metadata status change actions defined in Java is provided with GeoNetwork using the class org.fao.geonet.services.metadata.DefaultStatusActions.java (see source file core/src/main/java/org/fao/geonet/kernel/metadata/DefaultStatusActions.java).

When status change

This action is called when status is changed by a user. What happens depends on the status change taking place:

  • when an Editor changes the state on a metadata record(s) from Draft or Unknown to Submitted, the Content Reviewers from the groupOwner of the record are informed of the status change via email which looks like the following. They can log in and click on the link supplied in the email to access the submitted records. Here is an example email sent by this action:
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:58:58 +1100 (EST)
From: Metadata Workflow <feedback@localgeonetwork.org.au>
Subject: Metadata records SUBMITTED by userone@localgeonetwork.org.au (User One) on 2011-12-13T12:58:58
To: "reviewer@localgeonetwork.org.au" <Reviewer@localgeonetwork.org.au>
Reply-to: User One <userone@localgeonetwork.org.au.au>
Message-id: <1968852534.01323741538713.JavaMail.geonetwork@localgeonetwork.org.au>

These records are complete. Please review.

Records are available from the following URL:
http://localgeonetwork.org.au/geonetwork/srv/en/main.search?_status=4&_statusChangeDate=2011-12-13T12:58:58
  • when a Content Reviewer changes the state on a metadata record(s) from Submitted to Accepted or Rejected, the owner of the metadata record is informed of the status change via email. The email received by the metadata record owner looks like the following. Again, the user can log in and use the link supplied in the email to access the approved/rejected records. Here is an example email sent by this action:
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 12:28:01 +1100 (EST)
From: Metadata Workflow <feedback@localgeonetwork.org.au>
Subject: Metadata records APPROVED by reviewer@localgeonetwork.org.au (Reviewer) on 2011-12-14T12:28:00
To: "User One" <userone@localgeonetwork.org.au>
Message-ID: <1064170697.31323826081004.JavaMail.geonetwork@localgeonetwork.org.au>
Reply-To: Reviewer <reviewer@localgeonetwork.org.au>

Records approved - please resubmit for approval when online resources attached

Records are available from the following URL:
http://localgeonetwork.org.au/geonetwork/srv/en/main.search?_status=2&_statusChangeDate=2011-12-14T12:28:00

When editing

This action is called when a record is edited and saved by a user. If the user did not indicate that the edit changes were a Minor edit and the current status of the record is Approved, then the default action is to set the status to Draft.

Changing the status actions

These actions can be replaced with different behaviours by:

  • writing Java code in the form of a new class that implements the interface defined in org.fao.geonet.services.metadata.StatusActions.java and placing a compiled version of the class in the GeoNetwork class path
  • defining the name of the new class in the statusActionsClass configuration parameter in web/geonetwork/WEB-INF/config.xml