Getting started with Comala Document Control
- Robert Alexander Marshall
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.
A user with view-only permission can access the state byline links on the draft state version to view the latest approved 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.
View-only permission users can see the workflow state byline, but the workflow popup is disabled.
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.
If you require users with view-only permission to view the latest approved version of content, you can use Comala Document Control and Comala Publishing Cloud to publish your approved content to a separate space on the transition to the final state in your workflow.
Applying a workflow