Lesson 1 - Templates

Overview

Concept: Templates

Before we can do anything, we need somewhere to build our workflow – a workflow template. That's the dashed box in the diagram above – it will contain our simple content production process.

All workflows are stored in workflow templates, and a workflow template can only contain one workflow. Because of this, we generally refer to a "workflow template" as just a "workflow".

Create a page

Go to your personal space (or some other space where you can create content)

Create a blank page

It doesn't matter what you call the page, or what's in it. It's just somewhere for us to build our workflow.

Space versus page mode

Before we continue, you need to know about the two modes the Comala Document Management app provides at the space level.

One of them is called page mode

Page mode allows every page in the space to have its own unique workflow
It's great for developing workflows, but it makes managing workflows harder because every page has a separate unique copy of the workflow

The other mode is called space mode

Space mode lets you apply centrally managed workflows to the entire space – all pages and blog posts. You can filter the space workflow application by content label or content type (page or blog post) if required

If you want to see a side-by-side comparison, see: Page and space workflow application

For now, we'll use page mode, as it's a bit easier to get started that way.

Add workflow

In Page Mode, the process of creating a workflow is to simply add one to a page. Here's how...

From the Page Tools Menu, choose Add Workflow...

If you don't see that option, make sure that the space is running in page mode and that there are no active space workflows.

You'll now see the Add Workflow dialog, like this.

This is the workflow picker dialog box.

You'll see a scrollable list of existing workflows that you can apply.

If you were to choose one of those (don't, as we're going to do something else), it would make a completely new copy of that workflow on your page. If the original workflow was changed, it wouldn't affect the copy of it on your page.