It would be very useful if we (the system admins who are setting up Rhythmyx for the needs of our organisation) could decide when revisions are created. At the moment, it seems that revisions are only created after an item has been to a publishable=publish state at least once. This could be implemented as a checkbox on the page for setting up workflow states, or the page for setting up workflow transitions, called something like “Always create new revision”. Ticking it would automatically create a new revision whenever an item enters that state, or undergoes that transition.
An example scenario is the approval process of authors submitting content items to editors before the items are ever published. It would be useful to record the content of an item each time it is sent back to the original author for reworking, so that the next time is it submitted for approval, the editors could compare revisions to see if the author has actually made the changes they requested.
There is a global “revision lock” setting that turns on revisions before items get to public. I’m not sure what the level of granularity is with it (I think it applies to all items, not by workflow, but it’s been a while).
A workaround is to set up aging of items to a “public=y” state, then age them out again back to draft “public=n” state (before the publishing runs). Once the revision lock is on for an item (once it has ever been public) it’s on for good.
We do see a fair amout of requests for behaviors in this area - not only revisions, but the usability of public items, permissions and so on. Workflow is a area of much scrutiny right now - trying to make it simpler and more “ad hoc” (i.e. desired behaviors can be declared by the users directly).
Is there a way to turn this on by default other than having it jump through that workaround? I know there is going to be some back and forth between authors and editors where I work before the first publish, and I really would like for each item to be a revision so that it can be clear what is being changed during that process.