VLT specific actions & footer links & logos bypassing the Classic portal_actions are not Workflow state aware or subject to expressions

[acsr]

What was available as standard and now is missing in VLT

The whole portal_action machinery in Classic Plone coming from the original Zope + CMF permissions design was aware of workflow states due to having a general enabled flag checkbox and the expression evaluated to interpret permission based on rules that could be expressed as code via expressions.

It could be done in Code via generic setup or TTW in Zope or in recent Plone Classic in the actions controlpanel.

This was working in early VLT versions, but is abandoned in VLT > 7 (not sure if in late Version 6 already).

VLT specific actions & footer links & logos bypassing the Classic portal_actions are not Workflow state aware and / or subject to expressions.

A serious requirement

• In a workflow aware system like Plone a feature like this should not be removed without proper replacement of a core security mechanism.
• Another serious drawback is we go back to a situation where you cannot prepare complex footer or logo stuff in advance TTW and then publish changes in one go by changing states. Or disable them and reuse them later.
• You loose the ability to add actions exclusive to certain permissions an the group systems or workflow states.

Editor UX Challenge

• Especially in multilingual sites deploying changes to the LRF (Language Root Folder) via the Volto editor for VLT is a nightmare. Even when you now can leave this to content editors TTW.

Ideas

• It would be enough to at least having a way to mix the classic portal_actions in additionally would be great by introducing new levels like vlt_footer_action, vlt_footer_doormat_action, vlt_header_action in addition to e.g site_actions (not finally proposed).
• This could help to keep the traditional Classic actions out of the way and avoid conflicts.

Setup UX Challenge

• How to solve this clever in a combination of control panel and sidebar editor for Multilingual sites, is a challenge beyond this initial issue document and need more discussion/design efforts.