2.12 Workflows

In plain terms, a workflow models a business process. The following example can explain this better:

An online newspaper publishing firm requires various approvals of the created content, before publishing over to its live newspaper website. Instead of manually transferring hard copies of content to various groups of reviewers, a workflow can formalize, standardize, and automate the whole process.

Workflows consist of numerous activities, each comprising various tasks to be performed. Users or designated automated scripts carry out the tasks and pass over the document in question to the subsequent activity. What a workflow does, in essence, is routing the content through the various stages of its lifecycle via different users. Each user receives the designated task in one's Inbox and may also receive an email notification for the same. Documentum stores workflow definitions in the form of business process objects ('dm_process') in the Docbase.

Figure 2.14 shows a sample Documentum...