In this video, we’ll cover the basics of workflow in Content Central including triggers, actions, rules, and message templates. You can configure Content Central to perform many actions automatically using workflow. For instance, you can configure Content Central to send all purchase requisitions to the accounting groups work queue as soon as they arrive in the system. You can also tell Content Central to send an email message to the purchasing group email address whenever a purchase order is approved.
Workflow is configured using triggers, actions, rules, and in a few scenarios you need to build a message template as well. Sometimes we refer to these four items as workflow items. A trigger is some event that happens in the system or to a document. Some of the workflow triggers I see used most frequently are coding queue commit, content capture, or content query. An action is something that you want the system to do once an event causes a trigger to occur. Some of the workflow actions that I see used most frequently are starting an approval process with the approval process start process action or updating a field with the content update field action. I also frequently see the send email and the workflow assign actions. Most workflow triggers will ask you what document type they should be watching for their event. But some of them allow you to watch an entire catalog or all of the documents in the system for the event. Triggers that watch more than one document type are called global triggers and they leave the catalog and document type columns empty.
Global triggers can only be paired with global actions or actions that are not associated with a specific document type like the content delete action. To get more details on how to set up these triggers and actions just click the help button. You can configure as many triggers and actions as you want but until they are combined into a rule they do not take effect. A workflow rule contains one or more triggers. These triggers can cause one or more actions to occur in the system. If you want to create a work so a rule that uses the send email action or the send an internal message action, you’ll need to have a message template created that you can use for that action.
The message templates area lets you create message templates. Most customers will use a message code to embed information about the document into the message such as field values. Once you’ve created the message that you want to use you’ll see it listed as a possible message template and the send email action. You may have noticed that the work so often is available from the admin menu but it’s also available from within the catalogs and document types area. The workflow in the catalogs and document types area will only show you workflow items that are associated with the document type that is selected in the drop-down. You can always check whether you are in a specific document types workflow area by looking at the top of the screen. Workflow items that are configured for other document types or any global workflow items are not available from this workflow area. To see a complete list of all the workflow items in the system regardless of whether they are global, and without respect to the document type for which they apply, go to the admin menu and use the workflow area there. You’ll notice that the catalog name, description, and document type areas at the top of the screen are gone, and a new catalog drop down is available so you can quickly change which workflow items you want to see.
Some workflow items are created by the system and cannot be modified or deleted but they can be viewed. System workflow items have a magnifying glass next to them. Just click on the magnifying glass to view their details. You can duplicate existing workflow items by clicking on the duplicate icon next to the item. When working with workflow items the type drop-down box can filter the list of workflow items down to just one type. When you’re looking for workflow items, be sure that the type drop-down is set to the right time or is set to all types so that the item will appear.
In this video we covered the basics of workflow in Content Central including triggers, actions, rules, and message templates.
