Clarification for a beginner at Workflow...

chriso

I've been using TeamSite for 3 years but never with workflows. I have a few brief questions and yes I did RTFM (Twice)

1. Do all participants in a job need to work through the same WorkArea? For example is there ever a reason to have 3 editors all owning their own WORKAREAS and all trying to take part in the same job? Or must the job be contained in a single WORKAREA they all have rights to?

2. Can and editor submit to an author? All the examples in the book go the other way. :-( What about an editor to an editor? Is workflow really role dependent?

3. Do all files attached to a job have to be imported into TeamSite prior to starting the job? Is there no way to have them attach a word doc when starting the workflow and then have it imported into the system behind the scenes rather than taking two steps for this?

4. Best way to create simple workflows with groups? Examples provided or Solutions, or do I need to use WFB?

Any advice on when to use WFB versus Solutions workflows or the default workflows provided with the install?

Last but not least I have a site completely driven by Templating and DCR files. But I don't use WF at all. Should I?? If so where should I be looking to gain efficiencies in the whole DCR creation, save, generate html, submit, deploy?

Migrateduser

I believe...

1. All tasks in a job except dummytasks and endtasks need to be associated with an area. The area can be changed dynamically with iwsettaskownerandarea (and maybe OpenAPI/ContentServices). It might not make sense to have the same job associated with different areas though, since the files might not exist in the various areas or could contain different versions. If you did want to use three workareas, you would probably have to put updatetasks between each editorial step to make sure each user was always working with the new versions. The additional tasks will consume server resources more quickly. I would avoid the complication and just use a shared workarea. Before implementing I would be very sure of your requirements. If you do change the area associated with a task, you might want to change the area associated with all tasks in the job.

2. Workflow is not role dependant. You can write workflows to do anything.

3. If the files are not imported to the workarea and they do not exist in STAGING, I believe it will not let you attach them to the job when the job is created. You can attach them to the job during the workflow when they are imported, either using iwaddtaskfile or manually. Automating the import is a totally separate issue; I'm sure it is possible but not something I've done.

4. It's not much harder than usertasks, just use a grouptask and specify the groups or users. You can get them from multi-select list in TAG_info. I don't think WFB would make it any easier for you.

5. Use workflow builder for diagramming processes and developing workflow skeletons, then take it from there and code by hand. Some versions will not let you bring a wft back into wfb, so if you code by hand your changes could get lost, but there is a lot you may want to do that can be hard or impossible in wfb. I personally never use the solutions workflows - always code them by hand. I built a .NET DLL that makes it very easy to generate workflow XML.

6. You would probably get a lot of value using workflow for DCRs. You can automate all of this - DCR creation, generation, submit of DCR and output files, and deployment.