Customize Activities and Transitions for a sequential reviewer workflow template

Inspire provides you with a template for the process of getting content reviewed by two users. If you want a workflow that contains a different number of reviewers, more actions, different transitions between activities, or assigns work to different workgroups, you can customize the workflow template.

Required permissions

You must have permission to the Projects Module to work with projects and workflows. Other than that, you do not need special permissions to create, edit, or delete workflow templates.

However, keep in mind that administrators and other users can set permissions on components and folders.

  • You must have permission to edit the workflow template component.
  • You must have folder permissions where the template is stored.
  • For details on how to check and set permissions, refer to: Set permissions.

Tips and tricks

Before you begin

  • The changes to an Activity will be applied to all new workflows that are started using this template.
  • For workflows that use this template and are in progress:
    • If the Activity you are updating has not occurred yet, the changes will be applied when the workflows move to the updated Activity.
    • If the Activity you are updating has already been completed, the changes will not be applied.

To customize activities and transitions in a review workflow template:

  1. Click Components.
  2. In the Folders pane, select Workflows.

    You can save a workflow template to another folder. If you did this, open that folder instead of the Workflows folder.

  3. In the Components pane, double-click Sequential Reviewer Workflow.
  4. Optionally, to enlarge the display size of the template in the workflow editor, go to the top toolbar and do any of the following:

    • To enlarge the display, click Zoom In.
    • To reduce the display, click Zoom Out.
    • To return to the default display size, click Zoom Default.
    If your screen is minimized, you can find these options under the More menu.

  5. To manage the options you can select for an Activity:
    1. In the activity's title bar, select Edit.

      Results: The Update Activity screen opens.

    2. In Name, edit the title that describes the action users take in the review process.
    3. In Status, you track the progress of a content development Activity. By default, Inspire includes the following statuses: Writing, Reviewing, and Publishing. If you want to customize this list, follow the steps in:
    4. In Project Activity, you must associate the task with a category that defines the work.
      • By default, Inspire includes the following categories for Project Activity: Approve Content, Edit Content, Publish Content, Review Content, Review Image, and Write Content.

      • Project Activity is a required field and cannot be left blank. Although this field is not marked with a red asterisks, and you can create a new Activity without selecting a Project Activity, if you leave it blank, the Save and Submit options are not available until you correct the errors in the workflow template.

        • If there is an error in the configuration of the Activity, you see the Activity name in red.

          You must correct any errors before you can Save or Submit the workflow template.

      • If you want to customize this list, follow the steps in: Manage project activity configurations.
    5. Optionally, if you want this to be the first activity and no activities will come before it in the workflow, select Initial.
    6. Optionally, if you want this to be the final activity and no activities will follow in the workflow, select Final.
    7. Optionally, you can set a Duration for this activity in minutes.

      Important notes:

      • In the templates Inspire provides, by default the user is given a Duration of 0 minutes to complete the activity, so you will need to set your own duration.
      • You set the time in minutes from 0 to 525600 which is 1 year.
      • After the Duration passes, if the activity is not complete, it is marked as Overdue and notifications may be sent depending on a user's notification preferences.
    8. If you want Inspire to populate or clear an XML element or attribute value across components participating in the workflow, select the Update Metadata on Completion option.

      i. Click Update.

      ii. On the Update Metadata screen, click Add.

      iii. In the XPath and Value fields, enter the expression you need to update your metadata.

      For example, if you are using the XML element "otherprops" and you want it to be set to the date when this Activity is completed, you would use the following values:

      • XPath = /*/@props
      • Value = {$Date}

      iv. On the Update Metadata screen, in the row where you added an XPath expression, click Update.

      v. On the Update Metadata screen, click Update.

    9. On the Update Activity screen, do not use the Claimable option for Review type workflows. It's not possible to change the State from Ready To Claim to In Progress, because there is no corresponding assignment and review is created for a specific user.

    10. If you want Inspire to create an assignment for each user in the Workgroup instead of a single assignment for the selected user, select the Create multiple assignments option.

      Important notes:

      • All users MUST complete the assignment (or all assignments must be cancelled) before the Activity can be marked complete, and the workflow can be advanced.
      • This option is not available if you selected Claimable.
    11. In Workgroups, you must have a list of users who can complete the work for a project Activity. For example, if the activity is a legal review, you would create a workgroup that includes your company lawyers. To add or remove users in the Workgroups or create new groups, follow the steps in:
    12. On the Update Activity screen, select Update.
  6. To manage the options you can select in a Transition:
    1. In the transition's title bar, select Edit.

      Results: The Update Transition screen opens.

    2. In Name, enter a unique title that starts with a verb (action word) describes the next activity the participants need to complete.
    3. By default, the Activity where you selected Create Transition is listed in From Activity.
      • Optionally, if you need to start from a different activity, you can select another one from the list of existing activities.
    4. In To Activity, from the list of existing activities, select what users need to complete after the From Activity.
    5. In Action, you can identify a process that is completed outside Inspire, such as Hire a copy editor. You can also use an Action to specify something a user should do after Inspire completes the transition, such as Take a snapshot.
      Currently, there is only one Action that is performed by Inspire. When a user advances a project workflow task and the Transition has an Action of InspireCreateReview, Inspire opens the Create Review screen for the current user. To use this action, follow the steps in: Add a Create Review Action to a topic workflow template.
      You can manage actions in the following ways:
    6. On the Update Transition screen, select Update.
  7. To revert a change, in the toolbar, click Undo.
  8. To re-apply a change in the toolbar, click Redo.
  9. To save your changes, do one of the following:
    • To keep the workflow editor open and save your work locally, click Save Progress.
    • To close the workflow editor and save your work to the database, click Save and Submit.

    Results:

    • The changes to an Activity will be applied to all new workflows that are started using this template.
    • For workflows that use this template and are in progress:
      • If the Activity you are updating has not occurred yet, the changes will be applied when the workflow moves to the updated Activity.
      • If the Activity you are updating has already been completed, the changes will not be applied.