I am a programmer currently using the professional version of DNN 6 and have been asked to enhance the workflow portion of the HTML module to send emails as the status changes from changed content > approval > published as content moves through the workflow process.  From my research, it appears that the ability to send email notificaitons is now a part of the core HTML workflow process, but I have not been able to find any settings or documentation to confirm or reject whether this is a part of the core framework or not.  It makes sense that this would be included but I can find no documentaiton on this for version 6.  So, my first question is: Is email notificaiton a part of the workflow process in the core of the professional version?

Also, being a .Net and SQL Server type programmer I tend to want to write a simple trigger that read form an external table and sends an email based on the section but it would require a change to the core modules and tables which we would like to avoid for obvious reasons and would require keeping a separate table in another area (potentially) rather than having the workflow in the settings of the core.  The last time I worked with DNN was years ago (slightly past the ibuyspy era) and mainly I just wrote new modules not extending the core functionality or impacting it.  Since then much of the core functionality has changed and been enhanced form what I have read and tried.  So my second question is this: What would be the best way to extend this functionality to include emails without effecting the core?  I know that the ClientAPI can be used to "wrap" the core modules, but I would also want to extend the settings so that the next person in the workflow could be controlled there (by module or by the person updating the page).  No idea where to start and what the best practices might be for developing so that updates do not destroy my extensions.

Any insight that anyone can provide would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Jeff

Thanks for the information Cathal! You have been helpful as always!

Cheers,
Jeff

yes, if the module is set to content approval (CE) or uses workflow (PE/EE) then emails are sent to the relevant users - http://hive.dotnetnuke.com/Default.aspx?tabid=269 . If its set to direct publish in any release no email is sent - you would have to write a scheduled task to pick up the change - however I imagine we will be adding functionality such as this post 6.2.0 (in 6.2.0 we only converted email messages from html/translated pages to use the new notifications API - but we will be added lots of additional notifications once 6.2.0 is out and stable)

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