Routing a document in a workflow

Routing a document through a workflow produces a new revision of the document. Documents may be routed through one of three types of document workflows. A vault may use one or more of them for different purposes. Consult a system administrator for the document workflow types configured for the vaults you use. For more information on document workflow types, see Understanding document workflow types.

Regardless of the types of workflow that may be configured for a vault, the available workflow transitions for each document are listed on the Document menu when the document is selected. The workflow transitions available to you for any particular document depend on your security role for the folder in which the document resides. If you are starting a workflow, you may have more than one workflow available to you. If you are continuing a workflow, you may have more than one transition in the current workflow available to you. To view a diagram of the current workflow and other status information, see Viewing the current workflow.

Warning    Revoking a workflow deletes the copy of the document being changed in the workflow and reinstates the released revision of the original document as the highest revision. If the document was created new in the workflow, it is also deleted but there is no original document to reinstate so be certain that the document will not be needed or a backup copy is kept elsewhere before revoking the document’s workflow.Throughout a document workflow, the current status of the document, the next task to be performed, the person assigned to that task, and the person who initiated the workflow are all shown on the Document property page of each document in the workflow.

Note    Routing batches of documents is only possible under certain circumstances:

• The documents are all in the same workflow state
• The documents are in different states of the same workflow, but transition equivalence has been configured for the transitions of all of the states that the documents are in. Transition equivalence is configured by a system administrator. If any one of the documents in the batch does not have an equivalent transition, the entire batch will fail to be routed.

To route a document:

1. Select the document you want to route.
2. On the Document menu, point to Document Workflow, and then select a transition from the shortcut menu.
3. Depending on the workflow type and the current state of the document, dialogs may appear to prompt you for more information. Complete any dialogs that may appear and click OK.

Note    If the vault is configured to generate workflow event notifications, email messages are sent to the persons to which the documents were routed and, optionally, to the workflow managers and to the subscribers of the documents. Event notifications that are generated as part of a batch operation are grouped together as a single email message.

Warning    When a new revision is made of a document, any references to or from other documents will be updated to reference the new revision, not the original revision. This may have serious consequences for configuration management that may apply to your organization. If so, consider using Replace Document or Derive Document instead.