Getting started with Comala Document Control

 

Overview

Comala Document Control workflows help you manage the document review and approval process.

 

 

The Basic Approval Workflow above consists of three states

  • Review

  • Rejected

  • Approved

There are one or more transitions from one state to one or more of the other states.

The workflow manages the document approval process, with documents moving from one state to another as your editors edit, review, and approve the content.

  • the Review state

    • a state for draft content

    • requires one or more users to approve or reject the page or blog post content

    • you can manually assign one or more reviewers

    • if more than one reviewer is assigned, all the reviewers must agree on the approval decision to complete the approval

  • the Approved state

    • a state for final content that has been approved

    • if this content is updated, the workflow moves back to the Review state

Only one workflow can be active on an individual page or blog post at any one time.

Workflows in Comala Document Control

Comala Document Control for Cloud has three bundled workflows. These are available in all the document control space settings in each of your cloud site spaces.

The three workflows are

Each of these workflows has different

  • workflow states (milestones)

  • transitions from one state to another state (process routes)

  • content review activities (approval and review process)

Each workflow builds on the basic approval workflow - 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.

Adding a workflow to a document

You can add a workflow to your document (page or blog post), either

You must have at least view and edit permission to apply a workflow to a document. In addition, you must have space administrator permission to apply a workflow to all the pages and blog posts in the space.

Workflows cannot be added to archived documents and documents in the trash.

Applying a workflow to all space content using the Comala Document Control dashboard allows greater central management of your content and is the recommended use of a Comala Document Control workflow in a production environment.

Space workflows

A space admin can configure a space to add and apply a workflow to all content in the space using the Comala Document Control space settings.

The space administrator can choose to make one workflow active in the space.

The active workflow is

  • added and applied to all the existing pages and blog posts in the space

  • added and applied to any new documents created in the space

Only one workflow is active on a document at any one time. Making another workflow active in the app space settings disables the existing workflow.

Workflow added and applied to a page

Once a workflow is added and applied to a page or blog post, it defines content as approved or in draft, depending on the workflow state

Pages with an added workflow have a workflow state breadcrumb for the current workflow state added to the page sub-title.

Draft and approved content

If the content has previously been approved, an added View approved byline link to the last approved version.

Choose the View approved to view the last approved version.

This approved page version is the version when the applied workflow last transitioned to the final state.

When viewing this last approved version of the document,

  • the byline  Approved (Compare versions) is displayed confirming this is an approved version

  • and a link View pending approval to the current draft content version.

State byline and workflow popup

As an editor, your key interaction with the workflow added to a page is through the workflow popup accessed using the workflow state byline.

User authentication for approvals

For the Quality Management Systems workflow, the In Approval state content review has assigned reviewers and the requirement for reviewer credentials using an e-signature.

The workflow popup displays user options for moving the workflow from the current state to one or more destination states.

For an approval, the user only decides on the approve or reject decision, the workflow manages the transition based on this approval decision.

The popup progress tracker bar is used to view the states in the workflow. The movement between these states is called a transition. These transitions occur when a user approves content, rejects content, or updates content.

Applying a workflow