Automate approvals in workflow template

Inspire provides you with a template for the process of developing content. The Topic Workflow template Inspire provides includes an Activity for approving content. By default, the Transition from the Review Activity to the Approve Activity is completed manually by the user in the Reviewer Workgroup. To automate some or all of the approval process, you can add an Action to have Inspire send notifications to confirm components to be included in the approval, or have Inspire approve the associated components automatically without user intervention.

Before you begin

  • Permissions are required to configure workflow templates.
  • This automated Action is only available in a topic workflow template (not a sequential reviewer template), or a completely new workflow template component.
  • An Action is unique to the template it's included in.
  • If you want to use the new or updated Action in a different template, you have to re-create it in that specific template.
  • A component cannot be included in the approval process if the ApprovalNotRequired tag has been attached to the component. For more details, read Exclude a file from approval using a tag.

The Topic workflow template that Inspire provides includes the following approval Activities and Transitions by default:

Send for Approve Transition. If the users in the Reviewer Workgroup or the coordinator complete the Review Activity and select the next step to be Send for approval, Inspire moves the workflow to the next Activity: Approve.

  • Inspire checks to see if there is an Action for the Transition.
    • By default, there is no Action defined.
    • The user who is assigned as the Approver must use a link to open the Review Approval screen and complete the fields. At this point, the approver can decide whether or not to include referenced components in the approval.

To automate approvals in a workflow template, you can add one of the following Actions to the Send for Approve Transition:

  • Use the approval notification action (InspireCreateApproval). Inspire sends an email notification to each user in the Review workgroup (or the workgroup assigned to the previous user activity). The Review workgroup users can confirm if they want to include component references in the approval process.

    Add a Create Approval Action to a topic workflow template

    • If a user in the workgroup confirms that they want to include component references in the approval process, then Inspire opens the Approval screen.
      • Referenced components are not displayed on the screen and can't be selected individually during the approval process in a workflow.
      • The approver is prompted: "Do you want to include referenced components of the workflow components for approval? Components tagged with ApprovalNotRequired will be skipped."
    • If a user in the Review workgroup confirms that they do NOT want to include component references in the approval process, then Inspire opens the Review Approval screen for the approver with only the source components included.
  • Use the automatic approval action (InspireApprove). When the workflow advances to the Send for Approve Transition, Inspire automatically approves the components in the workflow. No referenced components are included in the approval and no user confirmation is required.

    Add an Inspire Approve Action to a topic workflow template

Required workflow template permissions

You must have permission to work with workflow templates.

  • By default, only users with the following permissions can create project workflows and assignments:
    • Administrator permissions
    • Access to the Project Module with the Create permission
  • Even if you don't have these permissions, you can be granted a special permission to create workflows and project assignments after a project is created.
  • Users must be project Participants to start a project workflow.
  • The Create Review activity must be assigned to a workgroup of users that are review coordinators.
  • The Reviewing activity must be assigned to a workgroup of users that have reviewing permissions.
  • The user assigned to the CreateApprove action needs the can_approve permission. Follow the steps in: Control who can approve components.