How can I edit the Lock/Unlock button in Sitecore Experience Editor?

Question

I would like to edit the Lock/Unlock button in Experience Editor, in order to enable it for a specific user role. By default, it is only enabled for an admin user and for the user who locked it.

I believe I can do it through the Sitecore LockItem pipeline, but I am struggling a bit. Is there another way?

Answer 1

I don't think you can fix this.. even if you would be able to toggle the button (which is not just setting security), Sitecore is checking the user (admin or user holding the lock) on several locations in code so it will be very hard (if not impossible) to achieve this using the default buttons.

An alternative could be to create a new custom button that gets it done. I would assume you need to switch to an admin user in your code to get the lock away (disabling security might help, but I'm not sure as this is not really a security issue). In that custom code you can create your own security based on the role you want to use.

Information on how to add a custom button can be found here: https://www.sitecore.net/en/company/blog/394/adding-a-custom-button-to-the-ribbon-3919 and here: How do I add a button to the Experience Editor Ribbon?.

Answer 2

This answer is just to complete @Gatogordo answer :

After you add a custom Unlock button to content editor you need to assign next command to the Unlock button

Create your own class for Unlock Item:

  [Serializable]
  public class UnlockItemCommand : Command
  {

    public override void Execute(CommandContext context)
    {
      Item item = context.Items[0];
      if (item.Access.CanWriteLanguage() && item.Locking.IsLocked())
      {
        Log.Audit(this, "Check in: {0}", new[] {AuditFormatter.FormatItem(item)});
        item.Editing.BeginEdit();
        item.Locking.Unlock();
        item.Editing.EndEdit();
        Context.ClientPage.SendMessage(this, "item:checkedin");
      }
    }


    public override CommandState QueryState(CommandContext context)
    {
      Item item = context.Items[0];
      if (item.Access.CanWriteLanguage() && item.Locking.IsLocked() && !item.Locking.HasLock() && !Context.IsAdministrator)
        return CommandState.Enabled;
      return CommandState.Hidden;
    }
  }

Add your custom command to a new config file located in Include folder:

 <configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/" xmlns:x="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <commands>
      <command name="mycommand:unlockitem" type="yourNamespace.UnlockItemCommand,yourAssembly" />   
    </commands>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>