SDI's typically have a challenge of a data publication requiring a review phase before becoming approved and accessible. It is relevant for each aspect of data publication; data, transformations, service and metadata. The review phase should be as complete as possible (including INSPIRE/OGC/QOS validation) so there will be no surprises when making the resource widely available.

GeoNetwork has had a workflow module to allow users to review a record before it becoming public for a long time, however the functionality was a bit hidden and had some challenges. This summer we're landing a 5 years old feature branch in GeoNetwork to improve this aspect of the application. The workflow, if configured, is brought more upfront and a mechanism has been added to allow to work in a draft version, before the approved copy is replaced.

This branch has been extensively tested by some of our users in recent years. From their experiences we’ll highlight some of the additional benefits of this module. The workflow mechanism can also be used to trigger publication of datasets in external components, such as Docker or GeoServer.