I really love October CMS. I love how October CMS allows you to hook into other plugins by using events or use the command scheduler to work with any table in the database. I love how these things allow me to add functionality to an unlimited number of plugins in a generic way that standardizes and reuses functionality without the need to write any plugin-specific code. This was the inspiration behind my new Workflow plugin.

With this plugin I can for instance:

• Send a customized email to admins who have not been active for over a week prompting them to become active again (cronjob > email)
• Ping a website (e.g. IFTTT) after an online payment (event > ping)

And... I can do this without writing a single line of code. Isn't life wonderful?

But now I am left to ponder what else could be achieved here.... any thoughts?

Did you check out https://octobercms.com/plugin/rainlab-notify before creating your plugin?

@amdad, thank you for your comment.

I did notice the Rainlab Notify plugin. This plugin is currently in beta but it would be nice to be able to trigger notifications from Rainlab Notify plugin in my Workflow plugin in the future.

There are a couple of areas that my Workflow plugin differs from Rainlab Notify plugin:

1. My plugin is intended to work "out-of-the-box". You do not have to write a single line of code to listen for events (or a scheduled time) and ping a site (e.g. IFTTT) or send an email to a group of users. It uses the existing (core) events in other plugins - as they are.

2. Although I focus on email and pinging at the moment, my plugin was intended to automate all kinds of tasks and not just handle notifications. I have experimented with allowing database queries (updating, flushing) and even running code. I discontinued these experiments because they made it unclear where this functionality originated from and I wanted to keep running database modifications and executing code tied to the individual plugins. I do have some other ideas though...

If enough plugins start integrating the new Rainlab Notify plugin there might be a time that my Workflow plugin becomes obsolete or it might evolve into something that will still be useful. As with everything else.... let's see what happens :)

Last updated 4 years ago

Thanks for reply. People like you, are the reason to luv October even more.

Also, maybe some of your ideas you would be part of Notify plugin. I guess they are open for improvement that will enrich whole community. Your plugins are amazing input! Thank you a lot!

Last updated 4 years ago

Ok, by now it is clear that my workflow plugin is something really different from the notify plugin.

My plugin basically is about automation. Much like the new Shortcuts app on iOS.

I have just completed a partial rewrite to make this plugin much easier to use and allow me to extend it further in the future.

I plan to add support for the notify plugin when it is out of beta.