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Translation Manager workflows

A translation workflow is a workflow process within Translation Manager that represents how each translation job flows through your organization during the translation process.

When the translation management system returns a translation job, SDL Tridion Sites users can preview how the translated content looks in the context of a website and review it. They can send it back for translation, if required, without creating a new job or copying the job.

Simple translation workflow

The following diagram provides an example of a simple SDL Tridion Sites Translation Manager workflow with all the available transitions and options:

The activities in all capital letters are automatic steps while the others are manual.

A workflow normally contains more activities than shown in the diagram, such as an additional step to publish to a test website after the PREVIEW or REVIEW activities and another to unpublish after the TERMINATED activity.

Workflow activities

The following table explains the activities that comprise a typical translation workflow. The steps in all capital letters are automatic steps.

ActivityDescription
Enable Edit WorkflowsSDL Tridion Sites Edit Workflows require the first step to be manual. To work around this limitation, any manual step with a single transition available is automatically completed when content is retrieved. If the implementation calls for an actual manual activity at the start of the workflow, create two manual activities (Translation Manager will only finish the first in the workflow).

This step is not needed if the translation review process has been added to the Target Schema or Target Structure Group.

RETRIEVEWhen in the RETRIEVE activity, an item can retrieve updates from the translation management system. For an Edit Workflow, this activity will be completed immediately the first time, because the workflow has started by retrieving content. In other cases (multiple retrieves in the same translation job), the activity is suspended once it is reached, and is restarted by the Translation Manager service when it retrieves the update.

The RETRIEVE step can have transition to the following activities:

  • REVIEW
  • PREVIEW
  • FINAL
  • TERMINATED

Additional activities can be inserted after the REVIEW, PREVIEW, and FINAL activities. It is allowed (even expected) that the REVIEW and PREVIEW activities lead back to RETRIEVE.

A TERMINATED activity can subsequently be followed by another RETRIEVE activity if a translation job associated with the workflow is canceled, but at the time of cancellation, workflow was in another activity, and the TERMINATED activity was not started.

PREVIEWPREVIEW allows the RETRIEVE activity to identify which transition to make for the preview version of a translation. This activity should result in activities responsible for previewing content, such as publishing.

This activity is any retrieval done out of the "Translated Content Retrieval for Preview" step in the translation management system).

The last activity in the preview chain should lead back to the RETRIEVE activity.

REVIEWREVIEW allows the RETRIEVE activity to identify which transition to make for the translation review process. This activity should result in a manual review translation step.

This activity is any retrieval done out of the "Translated Content Retrieval for Review" step in the translation management system.

FINALFINAL allows the RETRIEVE activity to identify which transition to make for the final version of a translation.

This activity is any retrieval done out of the "Translated Content Retrieval" step in the translation management system.

Review translationThis is a manual step assigned to a user or multiple users. If there are multiple users, multiple manual activities can be used. Users can modify the translated content, which is saved back to the translation management system. If multiple review activities are used, only the last one must have a transition to ACCEPT.
ACCEPTACCEPT indicates the translation has been accepted and no further changes will be made in SDL Tridion Sites.

From the ACCEPT activity, the SDL Tridion Sites workflow must reach the RETRIEVE activity, which can be done through additional activities, as needed.

The ACCEPT activity causes the translation management system to transition the item to the "Translated Content Retrieval" step.

REJECTREJECT indicates the translation has been rejected, meaning additional changes to the text are required in the translation management system. The comment entered when the last non-automated activity was completed is passed to the translation management system.

From the REJECT activity, the SDL Tridion Sites workflow must reach the RETRIEVE activity, which can be done through additional activities, as needed.

OBSOLETEOBSOLETE is an optional activity, which is used if SDL Tridion Sites no longer has the latest version of the translated Items.

Any manual activity following the RETRIEVE activity (with the exception of FINAL) should have the possibility to transition to OBSOLETE. If no transition is available when Translation Manager detects obsolete content, a warning is added to the Translation Job. Transitioning to OBSOLETE is attempted again on the next retrieve.

From the OBSOLETE activity, the SDL Tridion Sites workflow must reach the RETRIEVE activity, which can be done through additional activities, as needed.

TERMINATEDTERMINATED allows the RETRIEVE activity to identify which transition to make when a job is canceled. TERMINATED itself does nothing, rather it marks the path that Translation Manager should use if the job is canceled.

At the time of job cancellation, workflow can be any activity. When a translation job is canceled, Translation Manager does not terminate workflow in Content Manager because some additional work might be needed before completing or reverting the workflow, such as when you unpublish an item on staging. Instead of terminating the workflow, Translation Manager checks if there is a transition to TERMINATED activity from the current activity. If TERMINATED is not available from the current activity, then Translation Manager cancels the job, leaves the workflow as is, and sets the "tm:TranslationTerminated" marker in workflow process variables. If the workflow reaches the RETRIEVE activity later and the "tm:TranslationTerminated" marker is present, the transition is made to TERMINATED.

It is best to transition to TERMINATED from decision activities where workflow will be waiting. The example workflow diagram shows that it is also possible to transition from a "Review translation" manual step, as it is likely that workflow will be in this state at time of cancellation.

REVERTPROCESSThis is a useful additional activity that reverts the workflow process. All changes will be undone and the process will be deleted.

Automatic steps

The activities in the translation workflow are same as other typical workflow activities in Tridion Sites. One key difference is that most of the activities are automatic rather than manual.

Translation Manager

activity. In addition, set the Script Content to the name of the activity in all capitals, as found in the Activity column. For example, for the RETRIEVE Activity, the Script Content must be RETRIEVE.