Managing Content Workflows in Your BEA Repository

You can manage content workflows in many of the same ways you manage content. You can add security features such as visitor entitlements and delegated administration to determine who can modify a workflow or associate a workflow with a content type or folder. For more information about visitor entitlements and delegated administration, see Setting Delegated Administration on Content Management Resources in the WebLogic Portal Security Guide.

To see which content workflows are in use, you can view which content types use which workflows, or view a list of all the content associated with a single workflow.

Understanding Assigned Items

When the workflow action assigns the item to a role to which you belong.

For example, suppose you have a draft content item in your Assigned Items folder. If you check out the item, it is moved to your Checked-Out Items folder. When you check in the item and you change its status to Ready for Approval, the item is removed from your Checked-Out Items folder and placed in the Assigned Items for an approver role. If the item is rejected, the item goes back to your Assigned Items folder. If the item is approved, it is published and will not return to your Assigned Items folder.

An item may remain assigned to you if the workflow does not change the assignment.

For example, suppose you have a draft content item in your Assigned Items folder. If you check out the item, it is moved to your Checked-Out Items folder. When you check in the item and you change its status to Ready for Approval, the item is removed from your Checked-Out Items folder and placed back into your Assigned Items if you also belong to an approver role. If the item is rejected, the item goes back to your Assigned Items folder. If the item is approved, it is published and will not return to your Assigned Items folder.

Viewing Assigned Content Types

You can search for and view content types that are associated with workflows other than the default WebLogic Portal workflow.

To view content types that are associated with a content workflow other than the default workflow:

From the main menu of the Portal Administration Console, select Content > Content Management.
Select Manage | Repositories.
In the resources tree, click the workflow you want to view.
Click the Associated Types tab. Associated types appears in the Browse Types Associated with this Workflow section.

Viewing Assigned Content

You can view content that has been explicitly assigned a content workflow that overrides the content workflow associated with its type. For example, if some of the image content you have in your repository has been assigned a different workflow than the workflow associated with the "image" content type, you can use this feature to view that content.

From the main menu of the Portal Administration Console, select Content > Content Management.
Select Manage | Repositories.
In the resources tree, click the workflow you want to view.
Click the Associated Content tab. Assigned content appears in the Browse Content Associated with this Workflow section.

Modifying a Content Workflow

You can modify a content workflow. When you modify a content workflow, you are modifying the workflow for all content and folders associated with that workflow.

From the main menu of the Portal Administration Console, select Content > Content Management.
Select Manage | Repositories.
In the resources tree, click the workflow you want to modify.
In the Details tab, optionally, click Download File if you want to modify the existing workflow document.
Click Replace File if you have already created a new workflow document and want to upload the new file.
In the Upload Workflow dialog, click Browse to select to the workflow document you want to upload, and then click Open.
In the Workflow dialog, click Replace File.

Deleting a Content Workflow

You can delete a content workflow if it is not associated with any content, folder, or content type.