Product Workflow for WooCommerce

Product Workflow for WooCommerce turns your WooCommerce store into an end-to-end product production pipeline.

In real-world e-commerce businesses, getting a product from a sample to live storefront requires collaboration across departments: factory teams register new arrivals, photographers capture imagery, copywriters prepare descriptions, reviewers QA the details, and social media teams prep promotional assets.

Without a structured system, this process quickly descends into lost spreadsheet rows, uncoordinated chat messages, and premature store publications. Product Workflow solves this by establishing strict role-based stages, task ownership, atomic state management, append-only audit trails, and two-way Telegram bot notifications.

The Workflow Pipeline

Each product moves through a controlled 9-stage state machine:

  [ New Product ] ──(Manager Queues)──> [ Waiting for Photography ]
                                                    │
                                            (Photographer Uploads)
                                                    ▼
  [ Waiting for Content ] <──(Manager Queues)── [ Photography Completed ]
            │
    (Content Manager Fills)
            ▼
  [ Content Completed ] ──(Manager Submits)──> [ Waiting for Review ]
                                                    │
                      ┌─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┐
                      ▼ (Reject with reason)                                      ▼ (Approve)
          [ Returns to Photo/Content ]                                      [ Approved ]
                                                                                  │
                                                                          (Publish to Store)
                                                                                  ▼
  [ Workflow Completed ] <──(Social Team Completes)── [ Ready for Social ] <── [ Published ]

Key Features

👥 Role-Based Access Control

• Factory: Creates initial draft product requests with basic specs and reference photos.
• Photographer: Receives assigned photo tasks, uploads studio shots directly, and marks photography complete.
• Content Manager: Prepares localized titles, descriptions, SKU, pricing, taxonomies, and SEO metadata.
• Reviewer: Inspects completed products; approves or rejects back to earlier stages with mandatory explanatory notes.
• Publisher / Manager: Oversees queues, assigns team members and due dates, and performs storefront publication.
• Social Media: Accesses approved assets post-publication to prepare marketing campaigns.

Workers only see and edit their assigned tasks—they never get unrestricted access to your broader WooCommerce settings or customer data.

📱 Two-Way Telegram Bot Integration

• Direct Task Alerts: Team members receive private Telegram alerts the moment a task is assigned to them.
• Channel Broadcasts: Automatic status updates posted to your company's team channel.
• Mobile Photo Ingestion: Photographers can send photos directly to the Telegram bot—they are automatically downloaded and attached to the product in the WordPress Media Library.
• Interactive Commands: Workers can list their open tasks (/tasks), trigger photo uploads (/photo_{id}), and complete tasks (/done_photo_{id}) using inline Telegram keyboards.

🔒 Enterprise-Grade Data Integrity

• No Native Publish Bypasses: Prevents accidental or unauthorized publication of incomplete drafts through the standard WordPress editor.
• Automatic Invalidation: If an approved product is modified natively before launch, its approval status is automatically revoked and sent back for review.
• Atomic Transactions & Named Locks: Transitions use MySQL named locks (GET_LOCK) and atomic InnoDB transactions to prevent race conditions during concurrent updates.
• Immutable Audit Trail: Every status change, assignment, reviewer comment, and timestamp is permanently recorded in a dedicated audit table.

🌍 Multilingual & RTL Ready

• Native support for English (en_US), Persian (fa_IR), and Italian (it_IT).
• Automatic Right-to-Left (RTL) layout styling for RTL languages.
• Language switcher available in plugin settings.

Installation

Requirements

• WordPress 6.5 or higher
• WooCommerce 8.0 or higher
• PHP 8.1 or higher (PHP 8.2+ recommended)
• MySQL 5.7+ or MariaDB 10.4+ (InnoDB engine required)

Manual Installation

1. Download or clone this repository into your WordPress plugins directory:

   cd wp-content/plugins/
   git clone https://github.com/ali-abdollahzadeh/product-workflow-for-woocommerce.git

2. Navigate to Plugins → Installed Plugins in your WordPress admin dashboard.
3. Locate Product Workflow for WooCommerce and click Activate.
4. Database tables and default role capabilities will be created automatically.

Quick Setup Guide

1. Assign Roles to Team Members

Go to Users → All Users (or Product Workflow → Settings → Team & Roles): Assign relevant staff members to their respective workflow roles:

• Factory
• Photographer
• Content Manager
• Product Reviewer
• Social Media

2. Configure Telegram Notifications (Optional)

1. Message @BotFather on Telegram to create a bot and copy the API token.
2. In your WordPress admin, go to Product Workflow → Settings.
3. Paste your Bot Token and default Channel/Chat ID.
4. Register your webhook URL with one click from the settings page.
5. In the Team & Roles table, enter each user's Telegram Chat ID to enable personal notifications.

3. Enroll or Create Products

• New Products: Click Product Workflow → New Product to log a fresh arrival.
• Existing Drafts: Open the Product Workflow dashboard and enroll existing WooCommerce drafts by ID.
• Product Details View: Assign team members, set due dates, and monitor real-time audit history.

REST API Reference

Product Workflow exposes secure REST endpoints under the namespace /wp-json/product-workflow/v1. All modifying endpoints require authentication (WordPress Cookie Nonce or Application Passwords).

Developer Extensibility

Product Workflow is designed to integrate cleanly with your custom business rules and extensions via WordPress hooks:

Action Hooks

• pwf_workflow_event($event_name, $product_id, $event_data): Fires after a transaction is safely committed to the database. Handlers won't break workflow saves even if an external service fails.
• pwf_product_enrolled($product_id, $user_id): Fires when an existing draft is enrolled into the workflow.

Filter Hooks

• pwf_required_product_fields_missing: Extend or customize required fields before a product can be approved or published.
• pwf_states: Register custom workflow states.
• pwf_transitions: Customize allowed state machine transitions.

Testing & Quality Assurance

The codebase includes an extensive automated test suite covering both business logic and Telegram integration:

# Run isolated workflow & state machine tests (63 tests)
php tests/workflow-test.php

# Run Telegram bot, keyboards & settings tests (96 tests)
php tests/telegram-settings-test.php

# Validate translation keys and placeholders
python tests/check_translations.py

Architecture & Design

For in-depth details on database schema, state transitions, and component diagrams, see DESIGN.md.

Contributing

Contributions, bug reports, and suggestions are welcome! Please check out CONTRIBUTING.md for development guidelines.

Security

If you discover any security vulnerabilities, please review SECURITY.md for responsible disclosure steps.

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v2.0 or later - see the LICENSE file for details.

Crafted by AliABZ