Topic Status Feature

[Ineffable]

In RH, one of the tabs in the Topic info pane was Status. This enabled me to check boxes about the topic's status: In Review, Pending, Complete, and so on.

Does Flare have this feature? I am currently using v3.1.

Seems like an easy feature to implement, but I can't seem to find something that provides the same functionality.

[Andrew]

No, Flare doesn't have it. The closest you can get at the moment is to create conditional tags with the desired statuses, and apply them. This is a very poor solution if you already use a dozen or more conditional tags.

I've submitted a feature request for more robust project tracking capabilities (I hope that something very robust will appear with Team Server, and that a simpler version will make its way into Flare, like MadCap handled Analyzer).

In any case, you can submit a feature request here:
http://madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx

[RamonS]

Flare does not (yet) have such a feature. Some abuse conditional tags for it, which is less than ideal, but better than nothing. The question if that is easy is a matter of scope. Adding a drop-down list with canned options and storing the selected option as comment in the topic file is probably not that tricky, but then requests come such as wanting to report on these selections, having a special output that only includes topics for review and another one that ignores everything that is not set to complete, being able to mark entire sets of topics and folders as "review" or "pending", being able to add a dozen more state descriptiors, enforce a workflow (such as not being able to go from "new" straight to "complete" without proper security privileges),and and and. I guess you see where I'm getting at.

Would having only the selection of status getting saved be enough? You'd need to look at the topic properties of each topic to figure out what the state is. That strikes me as not very useful. So in order to make that a usable feature more functionality is needed, which instantly makes this mod to be insanely huge and potentially without limits. Just the few examples I explicitly mentioned above would take one developer the entire development cycle plus the nightmare of testing all the ifs and buts with all the variations and exceptions. I think it is a good idea and definitely something everyone can benefit from, but I am convinced that you want more than just check boxes (which I think is not the way to go, radio buttons maybe, but a drop-down is better).

I recommend you write up the key functional requirements that you'd like to see and submit them as a feature request here:
https://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx

[Marc]

Some abuse conditional tags for it, which is less than ideal, but better than nothing....Adding a drop-down list with canned options and storing the selected option as comment in the topic file is probably not that tricky, but then requests come such as wanting to report on these selections, having a special output that only includes topics for review and another one that ignores everything that is not set to complete, being able to mark entire sets of topics and folders as "review" or "pending", being able to add a dozen more state descriptiors, enforce a workflow (such as not being able to go from "new" straight to "complete" without proper security privileges),and and and. I guess you see where I'm getting at.

Not really, Simon. I can do many of the things you mention with -- condition tags. (Plus another nice feature you didn't mention: Because I can assign a color to a condition, I can quickly see the statuses of all my topics in Content Explorer.)

So let RH users have their canned status options. Flare's condition tags do the job just fine for me.

[RamonS]

True...as long as you don't use about a dozen conditions already for their intended use. Adding five or six document states to it makes managing it all quite iffy. The box in front of each topic will look like a rainbow that doesn't tell you anything. In regards to building the various outputs I agree that this ends up to be the same as a condition.