Town News - Obit workflow process

One of the goals of the new system was to send obits throughout the day, as they come in, where possible. 

In order to accomplish this, we needed to create a special process to trigger and send the obits as they proceed through the workflow process.  We noticed that part of the Legacy template mentioned the date of the printed product the obit was published in - so we will need to add the expected publish date as the start date in the obit.  

Additionally we learned that the process that we were using was also sending the obits to the Website; and although we are not displaying them directly from there they can be located in the main search, and also appears as part of the next story process. 

We have created a unique workflow for obits at each site, going forward you will need to use this "Obit" Workflow for all obits that move to Legacy...    For anything like funeral notices or the new 'memorial services' you will use a "print only" workflow.

Obit Workflow:

  • Enter the obit body into the Incopy template, get line count.
  • Copy the body into the appropriate field in TCMS (Using the paste tool) 
  • Name of deceased into the Web Headline field 
  • Date of death into the Subhead field 
  • Date the obit will PUBLISH, selected in start date (don't worry about the time)
  • Add notes if needed -  Alert: note added for instructions to paginator (Vet use flag... etc)
  • Section tags added: news/obituaries and zz_styling/obituaries
  • Add keyword if required ('no tag' assumes a paid obit) #obit_free, #obit_vet 
  • Image added as child asset
  • workflow set to "OBIT"  -  NOTE: If this is an object that should not go to Legacy use workflow "Print Only"
  • City and State of deceased entered into the Location Tab
  • Promote to Edit save and close
  • Editor review...
  • Editor Promote to Page Design save and close - This step triggers the send to Legacy and alerts the staff that the copy is ready for page
  • The page design process will promote the obits to Published when the page is final output

Once an obit reaches the Page design stage or Published - any additional edits will be resent automatically by opening the obit, making the edits and save and close. No additional processes required. The obit should update on Legacy within 30 minutes.

Processing Corrections:

Make the edit to the obit in Town News and save and close, the obit will automatically get picked up within 15 minutes of the change and resent to Legacy, It will automatically update the old version on Legacy no matter how old it was.   

In instances of a print rerun; the SAME Asset should be used for processing, make the corrections as stated above, place a note in the notes field in ref to the rerun reason, and reset the obit workflow status to Page Design.  Proceed as normal with repagination of the revised obit. 

To fix the e-edition, reopen the published page in InDesign, update the content for the corrected story linked to the page. Then use the BLOX Total CMS menu to navigate like you are sending the page to press, instead; choose Documents → output → Pagetracker → Final This will resent the page to the e-edition and will update within 15-30 minutes depending on time of day.   

More details on this e-edition resend / update process are covered in our knowledgebase by clicking here. 

GK - 8-31-22