1195538 - Feature request: Publish on {date}

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(support.mozilla.org :: Knowledge Base Software, task, P2)

Description

[Joni Chan]

It has become increasingly common for us to get requests to make content visible on a specific date, usually for features that are experimental or rely on partners or campaign messaging/timing. Some of these requests include both new articles and changes to existing articles.

If we publish the article early and keep it in the admin category, there's still a risk that the article will be seen by anyone with the URL. I'd like to request a "publish on {date}" feature to make these requests easier to manage. Requirements:

1. Reviewers can set a date for the changes to be live.
2. Community can still view, edit and localize the content in the meantime, as long as they're logged in.
3. Contributors can view scheduled changes in the article history ("Scheduled for {date}")
4. If someone views a pending article without being logged in, they'll see either the previous version of that article (if it's an existing article), or the usual "this article doesn't have approved content yet." if it's a brand new article.

Comment 1

[Michael Cooper [:mythmon]]

This sounds like we are adding view permission to article content. Is that right? Are we trying to maintain total secrecy for these revisions? Or are we simply trying to avoid publishing revisions until a given day?

Right now, any user (including logged out users) can view the history and individual revisions of an article [1]. Is the intent that logged out users won't be able to view these protected revisions in the history and/or not be able to view the revision content of these revisions?

[1]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making-automatic-connections/history

Alternatively, if we are just trying to avoid early publication, but don't require secrecy, we could model this as another review criteria instead of a permissions system. That seems like it would be easier. I'd be a lot more comfortable *not* implementing any sort of view permissions on KB document or revisions. That seems both counter to our goals, and also a huge pain and liability.

Comment 2

[Joni Chan]

Mike, after thinking about it, I'm comfortable with just avoiding early publication via the alternate option.

How about this?
1. Editor submits a revision like usual.
2. Reviewer "approves" but adds a publication date through a date picker.
3. Localizers can still localize the pending publication if reviewer selects "ready for localization".

Comment 3

[Michael Cooper [:mythmon]]

That sounds like a good set of requirements. I just reviewed the code related to this. It is going to be... difficult to implement this, I think. Easier than the permission system, but still a pretty large change.

I think we will need to break this into multiple bugs, but I'm not sure how it should be implemented or what the best divisions for the bugs are yet. I filed bug 1196531 to figure this out so we can go into this with a plan.

Comment 4

[Seburo]

Closed as per https://blog.mozilla.org/sumo/2019/06/07/sumo-platform-roadmap/