Comala Document Management Cloud | Approver assignment process

Overview

Occasionally, you may need to replace a workflow applied to an individual page or update an active workflow applied across pages within a space. What happens to your approvals and the assigned reviewers when you make these changes?

Scenario One - replace a page workflow

What happens to my reviewer assignments for the workflow approval if I remove a Page Workflow and add a new one to a document?

  • existing workflow with Approved state

wfvisual_review_rejected_approvedfinalstate.png
  • new workflow with Published state

wfvisual_review_rejected_publishedfinalstate.png

Answer

When you remove an existing Page Workflow from a page and add a new one, the following takes place:

Matching Workflow States

Our current applied workflow is in the Rejected state.

If the new workflow has the same state (Rejected) as the removed one and the history of workflow events and actions (document activity) is retained:

  • the new workflow applied to the document transitions to the current state of the page from the old workflow

Ongoing Approval Process

If there was an ongoing approval process on the page before switching to the new workflow:

The new workflow has the same approval workflow state (Review) as the removed one and the history of workflow events and actions (document activity) is retained, then

  • the new workflow applied to the document transitions to the current state of the page from the old workflow

  • reviewers remain the same unless the page transitions into the approval state

  • upon a workflow transition into the Review state, the reviewers are updated with new user values specified by the new workflow

States do not match

If the new workflow does not include the same state as the current state for the removed one, for example

  • Approved in the original workflow

  • Published in the new workflow

Switching to a new workflow sets the state as the initial state of the new workflow, even if the history of workflow events and actions (document activity) is retained.

Scenario 2 - update an active space workflow

What happens to my reviewer assignments for a workflow approval if I edit an active space workflow?

Answer

The same process of managing reviewer assignments in changing a workflow (Scenario One) is applied when editing an existing applied custom space workflow.

In the following example, the applied space workflow is

  • in the Review state

  • user Ashley assigned to the Approval

In the applied space workflow, the reviewer assignment for the Review state approval is done by the workflow on the transition into the state.

 

While the workflow is in the Review state, adding a new reviewer for this approval in the active space workflow won't change the approval reviewer unless a workflow event occurs. For example

  • a transition into the state

  • an edit to update the page

In our example, the event is a page edit, displayed in the document activity report as “Changed state to Review by Adriana. This is the user who edited the page.

On the transition event, the updated space workflow assigned the new reviewer value - “Adriana” - to Approval in the state.