Designing and Managing Workflows

Workflows manage the review and approval of content, ensuring quality and consistency. They’re like roadmaps for your content that define the steps that a piece of content needs to go through before it's published. Liferay includes a robust workflow engine that you can use to define processes for different types of content. Here, you’ll explore how to design and apply workflows to your content.

When Workflows are Beneficial

Workflows excel when content requires high accuracy, such as important announcements, legal disclaimers, or product specifications. They are also crucial for maintaining brand consistency, ensuring all content aligns with brand voice and guidelines, especially when multiple contributors are involved. In regulated industries, workflows enforce compliance by building in necessary approval steps to meet specific legal or regulatory requirements.

Beyond quality and compliance, workflows enhance operational efficiency and control. They streamline team collaboration when different individuals or departments need to provide input or sign-off on content. Essentially, workflows formalize approval processes, ensuring every step is tracked, providing clear accountability and an audit trail. When managing high-volume content, they also help regulate the flow and prevent bottlenecks, ensuring a more organized content publishing process.

Designing Workflows

Liferay enables content managers to design workflow definitions using a graphical interface called Process Builder. This tool uses a drag-and-drop interface, so that you can create approval steps without coding. That said, Liferay also supports designing or importing workflow definitions using XML.

By default, Liferay includes the Single Approver workflow definition, which provides a basic one-step review process. You can use this definition as a starting point for custom workflows to help expedite implementation. Whether you’re starting from scratch or customizing an existing definition, all workflows include three elements: nodes, transitions, and statuses.

Nodes

Workflow nodes represent specific stages within the process. They define where content is in the workflow and what actions users can perform. Liferay includes a variety of nodes, such as Start, Task, End, Condition, Fork, and Join. For some nodes, you can determine assignment, automate notifications, define actions, and even set timers to help ensure task completion.

Transitions

Workflow transitions connect nodes and determine the possible paths that content can follow within an approval process. Essentially, they define the options users have at each node. For example, consider a scenario with a ‘Review' task node that has two transitions: ‘Approve’ (which leads to the ‘Approved’ node) and ‘Reject’ (which leads to the ‘Update Required’ node). Transitions ensure content moves logically through the workflow based on user decisions or other relevant factors.

Statuses

As content moves through the workflow, its status changes. These statuses indicate where content is in the review process and what action is expected. Common statuses include draft, pending, approved, rejected, and published. By using statuses effectively, you can provide clear insight into a content item’s progress through the workflow process.

Best Practices for Workflow Design

Designing effective and efficient workflows is crucial for streamlining your content processes. Consider these best practices:

• Keep it Simple: Start with the simplest workflow that meets your core needs. Overly complex workflows can introduce bottlenecks and confusion.
• Clearly Define Roles and Responsibilities: Ensure that every task in the workflow is assigned to a specific user or role, and that those individuals understand their responsibilities.
• Automate Notifications: Configure automated notifications to alert reviewers of pending tasks and inform content creators about the status of their submissions (e.g., approved, rejected, assigned).
• Prioritize Performance: While workflows offer flexibility, complex logic or frequent external calls within a workflow can impact performance. Focus on efficient design.
• Consider Security: Be mindful of who has access to approve content at each stage. Ensure sensitive content paths have appropriate security checks. For advanced workflow integrations, discuss security implications with your technical team.

Adhering to these best practices can help ensure your workflows are functional, efficient, secure, and user-friendly.

Applying Workflows

Once you design a workflow definition, you can apply it to most Liferay entities. This includes web content articles, documents, content pages, commerce entities, and more. Liferay provides significant flexibility in how you apply workflows. You can create distinct workflow definitions for each type of entity or reuse a single workflow definition across multiple entity types.

You can configure workflows at four different levels:

• Global: Apply the workflow to specific types of entities across the entire Liferay instance.
• Site: Apply the workflow to specific types of entities within a particular site.
• Asset Library: Apply the workflow to specific types of entities within an chosen asset library.
• Application: Apply the workflow to specific folders or individuals items within certain applications (e.g., Web Content, Documents and Media, Forms).

After applying a workflow, Liferay changes the application’s ‘Publish’ button to a "Submit for Workflow" button in the UI. Whenever you use this button to create or update items, Liferay initiates the workflow. While the exact process varies based on the workflow’s definition, task nodes generally involve the same elements. First, Liferay assigns the task to the user(s) or role(s) specified in the task’s configuration and sends notifications. Then the assignee can select from available transitions when reviewing the material. In the next article, you’ll explore this process in detail.

Best Practices for Applying Workflows

Choosing the right scope for applying your workflows depends on your organization's specific content governance requirements and the nature of the content itself. In Liferay, when you apply workflows for the same content or asset type at different levels, the most granular assignment takes priority. This means that if you apply a workflow to web content in a site, it overrides any workflow applied to web content at the global level.

If you have processes that are universal across your organization, you can use the global scope to simplify administration. Even if there are exceptions, you can apply alternate workflows at lower levels to accommodate. Conversely, if only specific subsets of content or assets require review, you should apply workflows at a more granular level. For web content and documents, folder configurations are especially useful.

Clarity’s Workflow Needs

Clarity's fast growth and globally distributed teams require robust content governance. Their needs include:

• Automated Content Approval: Implementing automated procedures for content and asset approvals.
• Timely Communication: Ensuring prompt communication to globally distributed teams regarding content status.
• Preview and Collaboration: Supporting the ability to preview content before going live.
• Flexibility for Content Types: Adapting approval processes based on the content type (e.g., blog articles, legal documents, job listings).

Liferay's Workflow engine provides the capabilities to meet these needs, enabling Clarity to define custom approval processes.

Conclusion

Liferay's robust workflow engine empowers content managers to visually design and apply automated approval processes, ensuring content quality and consistency across various assets and scopes. By leveraging features like configurable nodes, transitions, and statuses, organizations can streamline review tasks, improve communication, and enhance overall content governance.

Next, you’ll set up and test workflows for Clarity’s content and assets.