Workflow concepts for authors and editors
When you create or modify a content item, your work may be part of a larger workflow process, therefore it is important to understand how workflow works. This topic provides a high-level explanation of workflow concepts.
What is workflow?
Workflow is a feature of Tridion Sites, which ensures that changes to certain item move through a prescribed sequence of steps. A workflow process typically includes one or more review steps by authorized gatekeepers.
- You first put Content Manager items in a Bundle and then start workflow on the Bundle. This action starts workflow on the Bundle and on all of the items it contains.
- You perform an action on a Content Manager item, and this action triggers workflow automatically.
When a workflow process is initiated, there is at least one activity, a single step in a workflow process. Each activity can be a manual step that is performed by a human or an automatic step that is performed by the system.
The departments or teams involved in the workflow process are Content Manager groups with each group performing one or more activities. Any member of the assigned group can pick up the activity, but as soon as one of them does, the activity is then exclusively owned by that user.
At the end of each activity, the item being processed has a certain approval status. Typically, this status is used to determine whether the item is ready to be published. For example, the workflow process may be configured to automatically publish an item to a website's staging server at any stage in the workflow process, but to allow publishing to the live server only after it has completed the entire workflow process.
A simple workflow example
As an example of a typical workflow, after an author creates a piece of content, an editor may be required to review it for spelling and grammar mistakes. In addition, the legal department may wish to perform a legal review and the sales department may need to fill in the correct price for products described in the piece of content. The piece of content might also be subject to automated processes, such as a word counter, to check that the piece is not too long, or a process that automatically extracts keywords from the text.
- The "Authors" group is tasked with the activity "Creating a Component."
- The "Editors" group is tasked with the activity of "Reviewing a Component."
First, a member of the Authors group creates a Component, and when they finish this Component, the "Reviewing a Component" activity is automatically triggered and assigned to the Editors group.
A member of the Editors group now picks up the activity, and becomes the owner of the activity.
The Editor then finishes the activity and the workflow requires that they reject or approve the item. Depending on their choice, the item then either flows back to the previous group (the Authors group), or on to the next group.
Workflow relationships
How workflow works, including what triggers a workflow process, depend on various implementation choices made by your organization. While these things can be rather complex, it is helpful to understand a few key points that affect workflow overall.
In this diagram, the Content Manager items in the top row can enter workflow if the items in the second row have a process association with a process definition. For example, a Page can enter workflow if it resides in a Structure Group that has a process association with some process definition. In addition, the items in the top row can enter workflow by being included in a Bundle whose Bundle Schema has a process association. For simplicity, this indirect association is not shown in the diagram.
The following definitions explains the things illustrated in the diagram:
- Processes
- A process refers to a specific instance of workflow in the system whether it is active or completed.
- Process definitions
- A process definition contains the design of a specific workflow process. Within the Process Definition are one or more Activity Definitions.
- Activities
- An activity is an individual step in a workflow process, which can be a manual step that is performed by a human or an automatic step that is performed by the system.
- Activity definitions
- An activity definition contains the design of an individual step that is possible within a process definition.
- Process associations
- A process association is the connection between a process definition and Content Manager items.
Process associations control how workflow processes are triggered. Depending on how workflow has been designed, workflow can be triggered in the user interface two basic ways: 1) certain actions being performed directly on content items or 2) by adding items to a bundle and explicitly starting workflow on a bundle.
- Related items
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A related item is simply a Content Manager item that is part of a workflow process.