Starting a Workflow
Starting a Workflow
To ensure that content has gone through the necessary approvals before publishing, many organizations take advantage of Cascade Server’s Workflow options. Starting a workflow will send your newly created or updated content through to one or more additional users for approval. Once all the required approvals are completed, the content is typically published.
8. Begin a workflow for the page we just created: /intranet/news/My-First-Press-Release.
9. Click on the Edit tab located above the page next to the active View tab.
10. Scroll down and click Advanced Options. Ensure that the Start Workflow box is checked (your administrator may keep this box checked as a default).
11. Click Submit.
12. You will be forwarded to the Start Workflow: Create Edit Copy screen, which lists each step in the workflow. In the Comments field, type the message you wish the next user in the workflow to receive. In this case we will type, “Please carefully review My First Press Release.”
13. Select a due date by clicking on the calendar icon next to Due Date.
14. If there are no preset user or group assignations for each step, or if you would like to change any assigned users, click on the User Icon under the Assignment section and select the user or group you want each step assigned to. In this case we will keep the user and group assignations as they are.
15. Click Submit. The asset is then locked into the selected workflow process and will be forwarded to the next user in the workflow.
Approving Content in a Workflow
Typically, once you have assigned a workflow, your role is complete. The next user will receive a message to review the content, and the workflow will continue. You may, however, find yourself on the other end of the workflow process: you may be required to approve content in a workflow started by another user.
For the purposes of this walkthrough, we’re going to act as two different users. Since we’ve already started the workflow as “producer,” let’s log out and log back in as the next user in the workflow process.
16. Log out of Cascade Server and Log back in using the username admin and the password admin.
17. On the Dashboard, beneath the My Workflows sub-section, you will see the workflow that you just created as “producer” waiting to be approved by the user “admin”. Approvers are responsible for reviewing content in a workflow and determining whether it should be approved and finished, rejected, or edited. Click on the workflow Create Edit Copy: A New Press Release in the CMS.
18. Click on the History pane, located under the View tab, in order to view the Comments.
19. Click on the Properties pane. In order to review the content in the workflow, click on the asset “My First Press Release,” next to the Review Content section.
20. After reviewing the changes submitted, click back onto the Workflow screen by clicking on Create Edit Copy: A New Press Release in the CMS.
21. Select the appropriate action by clicking on Assign additional modifications or Approve, which are located under the Actions heading. In this case, we will select Approve.
22. You will be forwarded to the Enter Comments screen. Type, “The Press Release is great,” and click Submit. This will forward you to the Create Edit Copy: A New Press Release in the CMS screen, and the message bar will say, “Operation successful” to indicate that the workflow is complete.
23. In this case, approving will complete the workflow and publish the page. For some more complicated workflows, additional approvals from other users may be required. In such a case, approving the workflow will simply assign the workflow to the next appropriate user.
In case you need to delete an active workflow in the future, simply select the workflow from your dashboard, and click the delete tab (an active workflow can only be deleted by an administrator/manager or by the user who initiated the workflow).