Fighting for the new feature: campaigns in SilverStripe 4

If you have been playing with SilverStripe 4 demo, you may have noticed a new feature called “Campaigns”. “What the heck are they?,” you may ask. Well, this is a result of feedback from you—SilverStripe users. And we’ve been fighting hard to bring this new feature to #SilverStripe4 for you.

How did it all start?
The idea of “campaigns” came about when we were trying to make the content publishing process easier for SilverStripe users and allow for multiple people to work together on a set of changes, without the slow process of lots of emailing back and forth. Also, we wanted to provide visibility to teams of where different work streams are at.

Draft vs. Publish
In a typical campaign, many people will work on different content types: text, files, shop items, or even staff profiles. Prior to SilverStripe 4, only pages could be previewed in draft mode whilst all other content types, automatically became live. This could be dangerous if the content contained some time-sensitive information. But worry no more. With “campaigns”, all content types will be able to be added to a campaign, sent to a draft state, so they can be published all at once when they are ready to be shown to the world. Everyone is happy!

What’s Joe or Mary working on?
Often, you want to know what other team members are working on to coordinate better with them. “Campaigns” gives you an overview of all the work in progress, so you can see, for example, Joe has updated an image or Mary has just added a new pdf file that you will need to complete your page before publishing it.

What does that mean for you as a content author?
“Campaigns” will help you keep track of your work better. For example, by labelling the campaigns, you will be able to remember all the changes you’ve just made and have the confidence to push that “publish” button. You will also be able to review changes that were made a few months ago and know exactly what they were about. And hopefully, working with other team members on the same content will be a breeze (but we can’t control that newbie who has just deleted your beautiful page).

Future development
We have plenty of ideas on how we might improve this new feature for you.

• Showing the different relationships between content types to give you a better overview of what is actually happening
• Displaying or scheduling the anticipated  go-live date for a campaign
• Setting permissions for different users in a campaign.

Hopefully, you’ve got a better idea of what “Campaigns” are all about now. Have a play at SilverStripe 4 demo and if you want to provide feedback to us on this new feature, just let us know!