Content type and workflow

[samthakur74]

Hello,
We have a need to create a workflow around a concept called "jobs". A job is a set of files which are passed from one workflow state to another. we thought that possibly we could have have a new content type representing each job. Each instance of this content type would be executed through the workflow.

Is this sort of thinking conceptually correct?
Thank you
Sameer

[norgan]

Hello Sameer,
content types and aspects are relevant, when you want to distinguish following differences
* different sets of metadata
* different sets of edit-forms in the details page or workflowsteps
* different configurations (icons, searchabilit, beahviours, rolerights, actions)

To do a workflow with workflowrelevant metadata with 1 or more files, you do not need contenttypes in the standard explorer at all.  You do need a workflow-contentype to enable the workflow to store its data somewhere.

The advanced workflow is basically a token, passed around between actors (the system or a javaclass could be an actor as well, then its not  a "tasknode but just a node". Each user gets displayed a specific edit-form based on the workflow-contentmodell and the web-client-config.properties and web-client-custom-config.properties.

So you can pass files to be edited  (content or their properties) or to enter data in forms during the workflow and act upon that.

Does that help ? For further readings, check the wiki for "Workflow adminsitration" and the links in my signature.

Norgan

[kalpeshforecm]

Hi Sameer,

We had a similar problem for one of our client. What we did is following.

1. Create an aspect in your Content Model which has one field similar to job id.
2. Add this aspect for all incoming documents.
3. Add one action to batch documents called 'Create a Batch' which will add one common values to all related job documents.
4. Customize start advance workflow dialog [getResources method of org.alfresco.web.bean.workflow.StartWorkflowWizard class] to add all batched documents with the same job number as of the document on which the workflow has started.
5. The batched documents will be displayed in the resources panel of a workflow.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Kalpesh Patel