How to use Sitecore Workflows

Workflows can be described as a series of pre-defined states that reflect work processes and procedures to create web content for your organization. What it essentially does is to provide a flexible way to create, maintain and review content, ensuring that only approved content gets published.

Workflow includes three elements:

• States
• Commands
• Actions

As a minimum, each workflow must have two workflow states -  the 'initial (editing)'; and 'final (published)' workflow state. You can only publish an item in a workflow, provided it is in the final workflow state.

Here’s a low down on the workflow items that are stored in the content tree:

Workflows

As mentioned above, this is the parent item that contains all the sub items that together make up the workflow. When you go to the Content Editor, select ‘System’ and scroll down to the ‘Workflows’ node in the tree on the left hand of the editor. This is exactly where the Sitecore Simple workflow is configured.

Here’s a sneak peek of the structure:

Each workflow is defined by the node that rests in the System/Workflow/Workflow template. Remember, you can have as many workflows as you like. If you want to add a new workflow, you just need to add a workflow node and populate it. The workflow node has just one significant field titled ‘Initial State’ that controls the default state in which all items will be created. In a simple workflow, the initial state is set to ‘Editing’.

States

These are the building blocks of the workflow and define the steps a document must pass through before being published. The state nodes are based on the System/ Workflow/State template and are added as children to the workflow node. The State template has only one checkbox titled ‘Final’. Once that’s checked, items in this state are deemed complete and ready to publish. Items can only be published once they are in the final state.

The Simple workflow includes four states, out of which three of them - Editing, Reviewing and Approving, define the document flow prior to publishing. The last state-Done, indicates that the document is ready to be published.

Commands

This feature is to move content items from one workflow state to another. When a command is executed, the item is moved to the workflow state that’s defined in the command item - you can think of these as links between states. Command nodes are based on the System/Workflow/Command template which has a ‘Next State’ field.

Let’s look at the Approve command of the Reviewing state: 

You can see that it has ‘Next state’ set to ‘Simple/Approving’, that is the Approving state of the Simple workflow. Contrary to this, the Reject command has ‘Simple/Editing’ as its next state.

Binding the Item

Generally, users cannot pick which workflow an Item will have when creating or editing the item. The Workflow associated with the Item is pre-defined in the Template or Master associated with the item.

Actions

The actions that are automatically performed on the items when they are in particular workflow states or when particular workflow commands are executed.