Documentation Workflow control
Proposal for an Integrated XML-Documentation Development Environment
An important aspect of creating high-quality technical documentation is keeping track of the documentation workflow. Most workflows include stages like planning of a document, creation of the document, review and verification of the document, eventually fixing and enhancement, various draft versions and the final acceptance procedure through the project leader or gager.
There are with author, editor, gager, project leader, customer and consumer different roles of users involved in the project and they should have different permissions to modifying and viewing the document. For example, the author should not be able to reset the status flag of the document and the customer should not be able to read the editors or gager's remarks.
For this cause a workflow management system is needed which will keep track of permissions, causal and temporal dependencies, tasks and deadlines. The web-based server system should give the project leader and customer the possibility to see the projects progress and (for the project leader) modify the workflow. Gager, editor and author should have a task list integrated in their desktop program.
The figure above shows the roles and communication structures involved in an example workflow.
The Workflow process should be customizable to the users organizational needs, an integration into existing workflow engines would be appropriate.