All the documents evolve according to a defined life cycle. This life cycle is composed of the following states: project, approved, obsolete and deleted. To change the document's life cycle state, you have to submit it to a workflow.
A workflow is a process in which a chain of users is defined to review and approve or reject the document.
When a document is submitted to a workflow, the users who participate to the workflow have an indication of what they need to do on the document. This is the directive. The workflow is automatically ended when all participants have reviewed the document. Then, the document moves into the pre-defined life cycle state.
There are two types of workflow:
- parallel workflow,
- approval workflow.
The difference between the two workflows is the participation order. In a parallel workflow, all users can review the document as soon as the workflow is started. An approval worflow, on the other hand, is an ordered workflow. This means that participants can review the document only when the previous participant in the list has approved the document.
Users who are involved in workflows are alerted by email and can have a synthetic view of all the tasks they have to do on documents in their dashboard. The documents they have to review are listed there.