Document Control workflows

1 Comala workflow | 2 Workflow added to a page or blog post | 3 App workflows | 4 Related pages

Comala workflow

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

The simple approval workflow shown above consists of three workflow states, or milestones in your documentation process: Review, Rejected, and Approved.

Each of the three bundled Comala Document Control approval workflows lets you

Ensure that content is reviewed and signed off
Assign specific users as reviewers

Once a workflow is added and applied

It 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 have a breadcrumb for the current workflow state added to the content page’s sub-title.

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

The workflow state dialog box includes

User options for the current state
A progress tracker bar to view the states in the workflow

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

By default, the workflow breadcrumb and state dialog box are only displayed to users with view and edit permission for the page or blog post.

In this initial Review state for our chosen workflow

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 usually initiates a workflow transition to a different state. For each approval decision, the destination state is set by the applied workflow.

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

Workflow states can be hidden from the progress tracker path in the workflow state dialog box.

In the example, the Rejected state is hidden.

The hidden state is only displayed in the workflow state dialog box and tracker bar:

By moving your pointer 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 is then displayed in the progress tracker bar)

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

App workflows

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

Each of these installed workflows builds 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.

Publishing a page to a workflow final state is a way of managing and differentiating draft and approved pages in the same space.

In Comala Document Control, View-only users are by default directed to the latest approved version of the content, but due to Confluence restrictions and permissions, this does not guarantee the security of the document. If you require fully secure publishing of content, you need to use Comala Document Control together with the Comala Publishing to publish documents to a target space in the same instance and use the full Confluence space permissions on this space to manage access.