Add an approval counter to fast-track an approval

1 Overview | 2 Set and increment the approval counter to action the approval | 3 Manage reviewer rejection of the content

Overview

Content reviews often assign several reviewers. Once assigned, the workflow requires that all the assigned reviewers agree - either Approve or Reject - before transitioning to another state.

Rather than waiting for all the assigned reviewers to approve the content, the workflow author may want to transition the workflow after receiving approvals from a set number of them.

We can do this using a metadata item as a counter and incrementing the counter using the increment-metadata macro.

Set and increment the approval counter to action the approval

The workflow uses the following trigger actions:

initialize a counter value using set-metadata macro
increment the counter value using the increment-metadata macro
action the approved transition using the approve-page macro when the counter value reaches a specified number

In the simple increment metadata example, the content is approved when three of the five assigned reviewers have approved the content.

{workflow:name=Increment Metadata Counter for an approval}
    {description}
        A simple approval workflow with use of increment-metadata macro to set the number 
        of assigned reviewer approval decisions to trigger the approval transition.
    {description}
    {state:Review|approved=Approved|Rejected=Rejected|taskable=true}
        {approval:Review|user=&suni,adam,elle,matilde,milo}
    {state}
	{state:Rejected|submit=Review|taskable=true}
	{state}
    {state:Approved|final=true|updated=Review|hideselection=true}
    {state}
	{trigger:statechanged|state=Review}
    	{set-metadata:approval-counter}0{set-metadata}
	{trigger}
	{trigger:pageapproved|approval=Review|partial=true}
    	{increment-metadata:approval-counter}
	{trigger}
	{trigger:pageapproved|approval=Review|@metadatafield.approval-counter@=3}
    	{approve-page:Review|comment=Three reviewers have approved the content}
	{trigger}
{workflow}

This example can be useful when you have a large number of users who are members of a global Confluence group, which is the assigned reviewer group, and your approval practice does not require all assigned users to undertake the content review.

Here's how each trigger action works

Trigger	Event	Action macro	Notes

Trigger	Event	Action macro	Notes
Initialize the metadata	`statechanged`	set-metadata	sets the metadata as `approval-counter` initializes (or resets) the metadata `approval-counter` value to zero on the state change event to the Review state
Approval counter	`pageapproved`	increment-metadata	increments the `approval-counter` value by 1 each time a reviewer approves the content condition `partial=true` means that the trigger listens for each individual approval decision
Approve the page	`pageparameterupdate`	approve-page	approves the content when the parameter value is updated of the `approval-counter` is incremented to a value of 3 (trigger event condition is `@metadatafiled.approval-counter@=3)`

An individual reviewer's rejection decision does not impact the metadata approval-counter value, but it does impact the context of an approval transition.

For example

the approve-page macro is triggered when the approval-counter value is 3, even if one or more of the assigned reviewers have rejected the content
the approval-counter value is not decreased if a previous user changes their approved decision to rejected

This may mean the approve-page action can occur if

an assigned approver has rejected the content, but three other assignees have approved the content
a single assignee approves and rejects the content two times and then undertakes a third approval decision without any other assignee approving the content

By managing a rejection decision, we obviously need to avoid these mixed decisions causing an overall approval.

Manage reviewer rejection of the content

An additional trigger may be useful to initiate a fast-tracked rejection.

{trigger:pagerejected|approval=Review|partial=true}
      {set-state:Rejected}
{trigger}

A single rejection decision will transition the content to the Rejected state.

The addition of the fast-tracked rejection trigger to this workflow can be used to manage:

when a single reviewer rejects the content
when a reviewer changes their content review decision before any transition occurs