The Workflow Editor

Use the Workflow Editor (Management > Workflow > Workflows) to create workflow steps and transitions between the steps.

Workflow Steps

The Workflow Editor provides the following types of steps:

  • A human step is assigned to a WorldServer user or workflow role to complete. For example, “translate” is a human step. When you insert a human step, you choose the step action and one or more workflow roles or users.

    In addition, you can choose whether to activate segment locking for human steps. Segment locking prevents translators from changing reviewed and approved translations; see the WorldServer online help for details. You can add new human steps to WorldServer; see the WorldServer online help for details.

  • An automatic step is one that WorldServer runs programmatically. For example, “notify” is an automatic step. When you insert an automatic step, you select the step action and specify values for the Input Arguments. When you add an automatic step to your workflow, an Auto Error step appears in the Workflow Editor window. You need to designate what happens when an error occurs during an automatic step. You can add custom automatic steps provided by SDL through the WorldServer interface; see the WorldServer online help for details.
  • A parallel review step is assigned to and claimed by two to five individual users or workflow roles simultaneously. When you insert a parallel review step, you select the number of parallel reviewers and the users or workflow roles. For example, use a parallel review step if you need a legal, technical, and marketing review to be conducted before a translation is accepted, and these reviews can all happen simultaneously.
  • A sub-workflow step contains another complete workflow within it. This workflow must already exist before you use it. When you create a sub-workflow, end it with automatic steps that set the return values. For example, if the last step in a sub-workflow is review, it should have two branches: one branch that goes to an automatic step that sets the return value to 1 for success, and the second branch that goes to an automatic step that sets the return value to 0 for failure. When the sub-workflow terminates, it can send failure or success to the parent workflow, which can then branch accordingly.
  • A parallel sub-workflow step is a set of multiple sub-workflow steps completed simultaneously. That is, it has two to five branches, each of which is a complete workflow. When you insert a parallel sub-workflow step, you choose the number of branches and choose for the step to be an And or an Or. Selecting And means that all of the branches must be completed. Selecting Or means that only one of the branches must be completed.

Workflow Phases

The phase of the workflow is a grouping of workflow steps that collectively execute a particular well-known purpose. For example, you might have groupings for Translation, Review, DTP, QA, and so on.

Workflow phases enable you to more easily track task workflow and project progress by replacing obscure workflow step names with user-friendly workflow phases that they understand well. This is used in WorldServer for monitoring task progress.

To create a workflow phase, simply go to Management > Workflows > Workflow Phase, click Add, and supply a name and description, then click Save.

Human and automatic actions have a Workflow Phase attribute among the Advanced options, with which you can associate the step with a workflow phase. You can use the Workflow Editor to associate any human or automatic steps in the workflow with a particular workflow phase.

In the Task List screen (Assignments > Projects > Task List for Project: <project>), you can view the phase of each task in the project. You can also select a phase and view only the tasks in that phase.

To show how a workflow phase can be used in a translation and review workflow, consider the following workflow fragment:

In this workflow, the translated task goes into review and then corrections are done in the Edit step. The task loops inside the Review/Edit cycle until the review is completed. From an external user’s perspective both the Review and Edit steps are part of one phase—the "Review" phase. To achieve that result, both steps would have the same workflow phase, for example, Translation Review. This string is used to convey the state of the task to an outside user without exposing all the workflow details, and is assigned to both steps in the Advanced dialog in the Workflow Editor:

The string "Translation Review" that appears here as a workflow phase was configured on the Management > Workflow > Workflow Phases: Add page.

Workflow Transitions

You create a transition between each step to indicate the path of the workflow. You can use transition order when a step can proceed in more than one possible sequence. This transition order determines the order in which the next steps appear in the Complete Task dialog box.

Example

The following diagram shows a workflow with a translate step, and a review step that can proceed to Finish if the translation is accepted, or can return to the Translate step if the translation is rejected.

For more information on creating workflows, see the workflows chapter in the WorldServer User Guide.