In Central, an Entity List can require approval in order for Entities to be created from Submissions. This applies only to creation, not to updates (see documentation). This is not currently described in any specifications and we don't know whether any other server implementations do something similar.
This setting currently does not work well if Collect is offline when Entity creation forms are filled. When an Entity-creating submission is finalized in Collect, the corresponding Entity is created and:
- If that submission is rejected in Central, the Entity in Collect is never deleted (even with
integrityUrl) - If that submission is edited in Central and then approved, Collect doesn't get the update because both server and client have v1 Entities with different content
To address this, we propose adding a new approvalEntityList value for the manifest's type attribute documented here (spec discussion). When a client sees an Entity List of this type, it should never create Entities in the local Entity List representation (but updates should be unaffected).
In the case where Collect has an Entity-creating form and no form that attaches the destination Entity List, Collect will not get information about the Entity List type. It will therefore not create offline Entities in that case. If a follow-up form is added later, Collect will download all approved Entities at that moment in time.
Please share any feedback or questions you may have!