Workflow Management

Documents

Find out how to apply a workflow to files. Setup a workflow that runs whenever a user drags or drops files to a folder in Drive. So you can be sure an approver reviews it.

Video Transcript

In this video we’ll take a look at applying a new workflow we’ve created to documents.

The action will be that when a user publishes a new document, it will trigger the new workflow.

So let’s go back and review the new ‘Job Request Workflow’ we previously created.

Click on ‘details’.

We’ll just confirm that the only approver for this workflow is Beth Travers.

Now there are a couple of ways of applying workflow to a document publishing process.

We’ll take a look at applying a workflow to folders within CentricMinds Drive.

Within Drive, we can see the folders here on the left.

And we can see that the ‘Development’ folder is currently empty.

We’re currently logged in as Chloe.

Let’s publish a document.

And we’ll choose ‘Research’.

And we can publish the document into the ‘Development’ folder.

We can see what the Word document looks like.

Currently, users can freely drag and drop files into the Development folder.

What we want to do now is setup a Workflow so that whenever a file is published into the Development folder, it must first be reviewed and approved by the user, Beth Travers.

Let’s setup this Workflow.

These folders here are actually metadata.

So we’re going to apply a workflow process to one of these metadata elements.

First we enter Edit Mode.

Choose Metadata.

And then click on ‘Thesaurus’.

You can see within the Thesaurus panel there is an element called ‘Folder’.

If we choose to Modify this Thesaurus, we can see that it contains the same values as the folders listed in Drive.

If we view Drive for a moment.

You can see here, Admin, Finance, Development.

And within HR, we can see Employee Benefits and Policies are reflected here too.

So we want to attach a workflow to the ‘Development’ metadata.

We select Development.

And then we choose to Modify the element.

Within the Development metadata, we can attach a Workflow Process to this value.

We’ll click the Workflow Process, and we’ll choose the new ‘Job Request’ Workflow, and we’ll select it.

We’ve just associated the Job Request Workflow to the Development metadata.

Now we’ll just click Next.

And then click Done.

So now let’s refresh the site.

And now click on the ‘Development’ folder within Drive.

You can still see the existing file.

Let’s now log out.

And now we’ll log in as Terry Dawson.

When Terry chooses to publish a document.

Let’s choose ‘Team Building’.

Terry can see the Research document within the Development folder.

But when Terry chooses to drag and drop his Team Building document into the Development folder, the action will publish the document but it’s not being displayed.

If we now go to the Workflow dashboard, you can see that the action performed by Terry is displaying as a new workflow item.

And we can see the workflow’s name is the ‘New Job Request’ workflow.

And it was triggered by Terry Dawson.

We can see that the request is to ‘Add a file’ to the Drive folder.

And we can also see that it’s pending review and action by the user, Beth Travers.

So we’ll log out as Terry, and now we’ll log in as Beth the Workflow Approver.

When Beth logs in, she navigates to the Workflow Dashboard.

And she can choose to process the request.

Beth can review the document that Terry published.

She can add details, or version comments.

Beth can choose to Approve, Decline or Process the Workflow Request at a later time.

In this example, we’re going to approve the workflow as Beth.

And now the document will become available.

If we now log out, and log back in as Terry.

When Terry navigates to the Development folder, he can now see the new Team Building Word document has been published.

In this video we’ve covered how you can select an existing workflow process, and apply it to a specific metadata value which is used to manage folders within Drive.