Approval Workflows

Approval workflow

A Comala approval workflow helps you manage the review and approvals process for content on a page or blog post. 

Open

The workflow shown above consists of two states: Review and Approved.

Each of the three bundled Comala Document Control approval workflows allow you to

• ensure that content is reviewed and signed-off

• assign specific users as reviewers

Once a workflow is added and applied:

• automatically defines content as approved or draft depending on the state

• users with View-only permissions will be directed to view the latest approved version of the content 

Workflow added to a page or blog post

Pages and blog posts with an added workflow will have a breadcrumb for the current workflow state added to the content page sub-title.

Open

A user's key interaction with the workflow added to content is through the workflow popup accessed this breadcrumb.

The workflow popup will have

• available user options for the current state

• a progress tracker bar to view the states in the workflow and display the next state available

The movement between these states is called a transition - these transitions occur based on events in the workflow such as approving content, rejecting content or updating content.

In this Review state

• a user can undertake a review decision for an approval - Approve or Reject

• one or more users can be added as a reviewer

A user approval decision will usually action a workflow transition to a different state. In an approval decision, the destination state is determined by the applied workflow.

The workflow records these actions in a workflow activity report for the page.

In the example, the Rejected state is hidden.

The hidden state will be displayed in the workflow popup

• by rolling the mouse over an approval button if it is a destination for a content review decision

• when the page or blog post is in the hidden state (and will then be displayed in the progress tracker bar)

In the bundled Quality Management System workflow, the In Approval state content review has assigned reviewers and the requirement for reviewer credentials.

Approval workflows in Comala Document Control

Comala Document Control has the choice of three installed workflows, each with different states and transitions:

• Simple Approval Workflow

• Content Expiry Workflow

• Quality Management System Workflow

Each of these installed workflows build on the basic workflow above - adding more states and transitions, setting an expiry period for approved content and automatically assigning content reviewers to provide greater control of your document development and management.