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Workflow with Project Group Scope Automatic Actions

There are times when you want to synchronize all of the tasks for all of the projects in a project group. For example, if you need to do some preprocessing of files that spans multiple locales or if you need to merge assets from different locales together, your workflow can include a project group scope automatic action. This action will only be executed once all of the tasks for all of the projects in the project group reach the same step.

An example of where you can use a project group scope action is if, instead of distributing files in each of the target languages, you want to package all of the target language as one file. For example, you might want to include a set of instructions in several languages, but you don't want to ship a different document for each language. You therefore need to wait until all of the translation has been completed into all of the languages before you can collate all of these resources together to create the single translated document.

SDL provides an out-of-the-box automatic action—Block Projects Tasks—that has a project group scope. SDL also supplies a sample automatic action—Send email for Projects—with project group scope, and provides resources in the SDK for creating your own project group scope automatic actions.

The Block Projects Tasks automatic action prevents all of the tasks within a project group from advancing to the next step until all of them complete the previous step. This action allows you to synchronize the work across all of the tasks in entire project group. The action returns Done in all cases.

The Send email for Projects action is supplied as an SDK sample and must be uploaded with the other SDK sample automatic actions. This action is a project group scope automatic action component for workflow-driven email notification. By default, the automatic action emails the creator of a project. You can configure the action to email any user with a configurable subject line and body. The Send email for Projects action includes attachments from all member projects in a single email. It can be used, for example, to broadcast a project group wide scoping report.

Block Projects Tasks Workflow

The following workflow uses the Block Projects Tasks action to synchronize all of the tasks across all of the projects in the project group:

Figure 1. Workflow with Project Group scope automatic action

Because the Block Projects Tasks comes before the Review step, all tasks in all projects of the project group will block on the Block Projects Tasks step before the workflow engine releases them in a controlled sequence. For example, if Task #1 in a project completes the Translation step, reaching the Block Projects Tasks step, it is held there until the other tasks reach this step, as shown in the following task list:

Figure 2. Task List showing task waiting for project group scope action

Task #1 has been blocked until the other tasks in this project and in the other projects of this project group advance to the Block Projects Tasks step.

Send email for Projects Workflow

The workflow that follows shows a Project Group Automatic Action—Send email for Projects—that blocks for all tasks following this workflow across the entire project group to reach that point in the workflow. A single aggregated report will be sent via email for all the projects in the project group containing all member projects’ translation kits.

Figure 3. Send email for Projects Workflow

The following screenshot shows what the Workflow Engine Queue and Project Tasks pages look like for tasks that are waiting for Project Group scope (in contrast to tasks that are waiting for Project scope).

Figure 4. Workflow Engine Queue for Tasks with Project Group Scope