Documentation Center

What is the workflow?

SDL Tridion Docs integrates the content management procedures of any organization and transforms it in a formal workflow. This workflow provides full control over content lifecycle.

Content Manager stores the user content in various objects like topics and maps. These objects have versions, each version containing different stages of content evolution. Content Manager labels the stage of evolution of an object version with a status.

Content Manager lets you create as many statuses as you need for describing the business processes of your organization, each status being a significant step in corporate content evolution, but you need to include statuses in one of two categories called status types: The Released status type and the Draft status type. Tridion Docs behaves differently whether it deals with released or draft types of object versions. Examples of Draft (D) statuses are: Draft or To be reviewed. Examples of Released (R) statuses are Released or Expired.

The dynamic part of the workflow is represented by the list of status transitions that are allowed: which status can be changed to which. It is further completed by the definition of the actions that each group of user are allowed to perform: which transitions are allowed to whom, which statuses are visible or editable by whom, etc.

This diagram illustrates a flow where a user having an Author user role can push a Draft version to To be reviewed. This would make the content accessible to a user having a Reviewer user role. That user is able to set the status to Reviewed when he or she is done with the review, and so on. At the end, an Author is able to create a new version from a Released content.

The practical definition of a workflow in Tridion Docs is therefore:
  • A list of statuses grouped in status types.
  • A list of available status transitions.
  • A definition of user roles in terms of statuses they have access to and transitions they can perform.
  • Inbox settings letting the appropriate users be notified of expected actions.
Scope
Status, status transition, user roles, in one word the Workflow, applies to all objects except publications. A publication is not pushed from one status to another, from one user to another, the same way a topic or a map is. Controlling publications life cycle, which is at a much higher level of management than the content itself, requires that you use baseline management features, accessible from the Baseline tab in Publication Manager, or from the Web Client features (Translation, Reports...). Publications are outside the workflow.