There are four workflow roles within Educommons: Producer, QA, Reviewer and Publisher. The exact responsibilities of each role vary between institutions. The general workflow is as follows:

Every course has a course summary that lists how many objects a course has and what their workflow status is. This summary is listed on every page on the right-hand side.

Producer

The Producer is the person(s) in charge of putting most of the course content into Educommons. You can check how many objects are in Producer workflow status by clicking “InProg.”

QA

QA is in charge of making sure the links work and that the site conforms to certain standards. At some institutions, the QA is also in charge of copyright clearance. To learn more about copyright clearance issues, look at COSL's information on Intellectual Property

Publisher

The Publisher is the final person to inspect a course/object and moves the item(s) to public view.

Moving an Item

To move an item(s) to the next part of the workflow, click state:[Current State], where [Current State] is either “InProgress” “QA,” “Rel” or “Pub.”

The page you clicked from will determine what items are selected to move the workflow. For example, if you click on a course, that course will be selected to move through the workflow and if you click on a page, that page will be selected to move through the course. When moving more than one object, make sure that all the objects are at the same workflow status, because they cannot be moved otherwise. Also, if all of the content in a course is published, but the course itself is not published, the course will not be viewable. A course is not visible until the department, course, and all of the content are at published status.

Before moving objects to the next workflow status, add a comment to the publishing history. These comments may include disclaimers or reasons why the item(s) are being moved. By adding comments, you’ll help facilitate better communication between roles and a smoother, more efficient workflow.

Once you are done adding comments, scroll down and click “Save.”

Other Roles in eduCommons

There are two other roles in eduCommons: Administrator and Viewer. An administrator has eduCommons superpowers and can perform the functions of every role. Along with the functions of other roles, Administrators can also do things like add new users, skin the eduCommons instance and perform multilingual support.

The Viewer is sort of the antihesis of the Administrator in that it can perform no function in eduCommons. A Viewer can only view contents. A viewer cannot alter objects or move them through the work flow. This role is most useful for faculty to view their course as it is in production. They can view objects and provide guidance for the producer as the course is being built.