iWebPress is designed to enable you to see the status of every assignment within the system quickly and easily. iWebPress' status system is in place to allow easier management of your paper. iWebPress is designed to speed your organization up, not slow it down. For this reason, it is not necessary to utilize all of these features.

Finding Authors

First, when creating assignments, it is not necessary to chose authors right away. Rather, you can create assignments, and then go to the find assignments page to search for authors based on their interests and/or average rating (discussed below), and any other criteria that might make them suitable to author the assignment (See Also: Finding the Right User For an Assignment).

Accept or Reject

The next recommendation is that you email users their assignments using iWebPress's powerful mass mailing features. This will enable users to confirm they got the assignment by accepting it, which will mark the assignment as accepted, and put a thumbs up next to the assignment on the Find Assignments page (see relevant sections in this chapter relating to the find assignments page and emailing users).

Depending on how your organization works, assignments might be rejected. This will mark the assignment in red on the Find Assignments page, and send a private message to the editor for the assignment. A new author should be selected for the assignment, and the assignment should then be emailed to the new author, who will accept or reject it. This process is repeated until a suitable author can be located.

Write the Story

Next, the assignment (if its an article) can be worked on online. This is also optional. Your authors could just as easily type the assignment in word and copy and paste it into iWebPress when finished. Of course, using iWebPress to save assignments centralizes content and allows authors to work on their stories from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection. Additionally, iWebPress' servers are fully redundant, so hardware failure won't mean a story is lost.

Mark it as Completed

Once the assignment is completed (or if its an image) the assignee simply can submit the assignment. This will mark it as completed in the Find Assignments page. Had the assignment been previously overdue, it would have been red. Once its submitted it's no longer red. The assignment will now be locked from the author (unless the author is an editor). The author will only be able to see changes being made, but will not be able to make them himself (unless an editor unchecks the assignment to make it uncompleted).

Edit the Assignment

Editors can begin to make changes to the assignment. You can use the Compare to Original feature to compare the assignment to the one the author submitted. Editors can also leave comments on the story for internal review purposes. Many organizations have editing requirements (such as: 3 editors much edit the story). Comments and history are a great way to enforce such requirements.

Approved for Publication

Once the assignment is completed, someone with permission will mark it as Approved for Publication (usually the Editor-in-Chief). The assignment will then be locked from any changes except by individuals of Editor-in-Chief access level. It is considered ready for publication at this point.

Ranking

Ranking can occur at any time during the process. In the diagram above it happens last. This is acceptable, but it could just as easily be one of the first things done as well. See the Ranking section below for more details.