DustinsDesign.com

This example is for Joomla 1.0.15

If you have worked with Joomla for any length of time you will have noticed that the workflow system has some room for improvement. Following is one way to work around this shortcoming.

When a new item is submitted from the public frontend a Private Message is sent to the Super Administrator. Wouldn’t it be great if we could customize this message and have a copy sent to an email of our choosing? Here is how you do it:

First, edit _ON_NEW_CONTENT in your language file. This is the content of your message. The English language file is located at /language/english.php.

Second, add the following to the /component/com_content/content.php right around line 2400 right after:


foreach ($users as $user_id) {
$msg = new mosMessage( $database );
$msg->send( $my->id, $user_id, "New Item", sprintf( _ON_NEW_CONTENT, $my->username, $row->title, $section, $category ) );
}


Add:

Now an email containing the new content information will be sent in addition to the PM. You can set rules where you receive this email to check the section and/or category. Then simply forward the email to the publishers for those content groups. Hopefully the next version of Joomla will have better workflow capabilities built in.

Warning: This is a hack!
I personally hate hacks, but when the client asks for a feature that can’t easily be built into an extension sometimes it is the most efficient option. If you use this just be warned that you will have to re-apply this hack if you ever upgrade.

Disclaimer: This has worked for me, but please use at your own risk!