Creating Custom Workflows

Control Center allows you to create new custom workflows. Use custom workflows to match the specifics of the labeling process in your company.

Before you decide to create and use custom workflows, analyze your labeling process and the built-in Control Center workflows first. Consider these three available options:

Introduce an entirely new workflow. In this case you are creating a new workflow from scratch. Although this is the most flexible option, make sure you know your approval process well enough before you start building a workflow. This saves your time and helps you eliminate potential future errors.
Edit the built-in workflows. In this case, we recommend you to duplicate and customize the most appropriate built-in workflow. Because the steps in a duplicated workflow are already configured, you must only make the necessary changes to adapt the workflow steps to your label approval process.
Try to redesign and match your labeling process with the built-in workflows. This option makes sure your selected workflows are fully tested and functional from start.

Before you start creating or editing the workflows, get familiar with the terms used in your workflow editor:

Steps: Each workflow contains one or more phases called steps. During the approval process, your documents go through the predefined approval steps. You can create, name, and order your steps, then assign states to each step.
States: States determine what you can do with a document during a workflow step. States include Working, Locked, and Published (see below for a detailed description of states). Users assigned to custom workflow steps can only use the states you assign to your steps.
Transitions: You control the workflow’s direction with transitions. For example, when a reviewer rejects someone’s changes, you can direct that document back to the submitter, or forward it to a different reviewer. All steps can transition forward or backward, except your initial step.
Delayed publishing: Workflows can contain timed approvals that automatically transition your documents form Approved step to Published at the time you choose.
Who to notify in this step: You control who gets email notifications for each workflow step.
Enabled workflows: You can toggle workflows on and off. All workflows require Versioning to be enabled.

	Note
	To create customized workflows, you must be a member of the Administration Access Role.

To create a new workflow:

Go to Administration > Versioning and Workflows.
If you want to add a new custom workflow, click Add. The editing window for a new workflow opens.

If you are adding a custom workflow based on one of the existing workflows, select the existing workflow and click Duplicate. The editing window for a duplicated workflow opens. Further configuration steps are the same as for a new workflow except for the already configured steps.

	Note
	This step is available only in On-premise Control Center.

Add and configure your workflow steps. Click Add step in the Steps field to add new steps. To edit an existing workflow step, click the step and click Edit.

Type the Step name.

Select the File state changes to for this step:

In progress (working): Reviewers can check in, check out, and change the document. Use this state for earlier approval steps when you expect multiple changes to the document, such as draft, first level approval, etc.
In approval (locked): The document is read-only in this state. Reviewers can only review the document. Use this state to keep documents unchanged on the current step. For example, when requesting approval.

Published (locked): All members of all access roles can see the documents. Use this state when documents are ready to use in production.

Set your first workflow step as the Initial step. You can only define one step as the initial step.

Login required (Electronic signature) is an additional security measure that prevents unauthorized users from making changes to workflow steps.

After you enable the Electronic signature, users authorized to promote the documents to the next workflow step must authenticate again with Control Center credentials.

	Note
	While authenticating with the Electronic signature, your session remains open. After the successful authentication, you can continue promoting your document.

	Note
	Electronic signature in your Loftware Cloud works only with Microsoft accounts.

Allow setting major revision: If your document had a minor version in the preceding workflow step, the promotion changes the current (minor) revision number into a major revision.

This option is not available if you enable the option Use only major revision numbers. Check its status in Administration > Versioning and Workflows. Read more in section Versioning and Workflows.

Example 11. Example

Document's revision number in the "Draft" step was 3.2. After promoting the document to the "Request for approval" step, its revision number goes to 4.0.

Notification emails. When a documents reach the workflow steps, the listed users receive emails with the links to the documents.

	Note
	If you change the workflow step for multiple documents at once, the listed recipients receive separate emails for each document.

For each workflow step, you can define which users receive notification emails after a document reaches the current step using Allow the person who makes a transition to choose the recipients option.

Repeat the configuration for all of your planned workflow steps. The new steps are listed under the Steps of your new workflow. Click Create in the top-right corner when you are done.

To send notification emails to the users who should be informed about the changes in workflows, click SMTP Settings.

After defining the steps for your workflow, define how will you promote the documents to the next workflow step. The transition allows you to define the promoting options for your documents: approvals, rejections, and time delays before publishing. Click Add transition to define the transition to the next step in your workflow. The Add Workflow Step Transition window opens. Define your order of the steps, who can make transitions, delayed publishing, and multiple approvals.

After you define your custom workflow, you can apply this workflow in your Documents the same way you apply the built-in workflows. See section Enabling Workflows for details.

If you want to delete your workflow, make sure that none of the files in your Documents use the workflow or any of its steps.

If an error or warning occurs while deleting your workflow, try deleting the individual steps first. When deleting the workflow step that is in use, a warning displays the names of the files that use the workflow step you are trying to delete.

	Note
	You can't delete the built-in workflows.