Problem: Currently, we need a trained content editor to create events. The event content, often comes via email from others inside (or outside) the organization. This typically involves copy/paste of event info. I could setup a form but this would still require manual effort.
Objective: I'm looking for a clever workflow adjustment to allow people (authenticated or even anonymous) to stage the event content for approval so that many people can initiate the event workflow and an event coordinator can finalize/approve. Civi already has the public/active flags for events. I know many folks are developers and jump to a dev solution, but wondered if some creative folks had an approach to this for a system builder without much new coding - Anyone up to the challenge?
Scope: Clearly this can be done via development of an extension/api or custom tpl, but wondered if someone has a lower cost/maintenance approach to preparing/staging content in CiviCRM (like drafts/workflow in a CMS.) I'm using Drupal.
Approaches: Since I'm using Drupal, one path I considered is civicrm_entity which now supports domain.com/civicrm-event/add or domain.com/civicrm-event/edit. This exposes the laundry list of event fields so I would need display suite or some other module to hide most of the irrelevant fields and set the event to inactive. The problem here is that price / location / etc. are actually different entities so I believe i'd need code to join them. The nice thing here is that the user can see the template content and then just edit it or leave it.
Another thought was creating to webform or entityform to ask the user to fill-in things like event title, description, etc. and then using drupal rules, create an event based on a template and copy those fields to a new, unpublished event.