Direct and indirect Process Associations

A Process Association can be direct or indirect. Apart from the direct Process Association for Bundle Schemas, we recommend using indirect Process Associations over direct ones.

Direct Process Associations

A direct Process Association is one that is defined in a schema or organizational item and which causes workflow to be triggered when an action is performed directly on an item based on the schema or located in the organizational item. The following table shows which types of content items can have a direct Process Association, and how the type of content item can be used to trigger a Process.

Item with direct Process AssociationItem triggering a ProcessAction triggering a Process
Bundle SchemaBundlestart workflow
SchemaComponentcreate, edit, rollback, classify/reclassify/unclassify
Multimedia SchemaMultimedia Componentcreate, edit, rollback, classify/reclassify/unclassify
Structure GroupPagecreate, edit, rollback, classify/reclassify/unclassify
Publication2Component Templatecreate, edit, rollback1
Publication2Page Templatecreate, edit, rollback1

Indirect Process Associations

An indirect Process Association is where content items go into workflow because they are part of a Bundle that is subject to workflow. The content items in the Bundle are subject to the same Process Association, and thus Process Definition, as the Bundle.

The following table shows which types of content items can have an indirect Process Association, and how it works.

  • Components
  • Page
  • Component Templates
  • Page Templates
  • Template Building Blocks
  • other Bundles
Item configured to require a workflow BundleItem type added to a Bundle with a Process Association
(Component) SchemaComponent based on this Schema
Multimedia SchemaMultimedia Component based on this Multimedia Schema
Structure GroupPage in this Structure Group
PublicationComponent Template, Page Template or Template Building Block in this Publication

When configuring this kind of indirect Process Association, you may indicate a preference for a certain Process Definition (that is, you may indicate that you would prefer the items to be added to a Bundle whose Bundle Schema is associated with a specific Process Definition). Doing so makes that Process Definition more prominent to the user when they add the item to a Bundle.

Additional Process Associations

The direct and indirect Process Associations listed above are the default associations in Content Manager. You can also create additional associations.

  • For use with Translation Manager, you can define Process Associations for Translation (Review) Workflows.

  • You can also create Process Associations using the Event System. For example, let's say that you want workflow to be triggered for Components, not based on Schema but on the Folder in which the Component resides. You can then use the GetProcessDefinitionsEventArgs class to create this association.