Review/Approval and Sign-off

[rally]

Is there any way of creating a workflow which would allow for sign-off?

Essentially, a user would get a task to approve a document and they could either sign it off and/or add comments to it for review.

All of the sign-off information (i.e. a record saying that the person clicked the sign-off button or something) would be permanently attached to that version of the document and traceable for auditing purposes. This way anyone can go back in to the properties of the document and see who signed it off and when.

Does anyone know who to do this? Based on what I've seen, the auditing and traceability of a document through the workflow isn't as intuitive as my management would like to see (if such capability even exisits). With the current examples included in the build, once a document has completed a workflow, there is no record that it was ever attached to that workflow.

If anyone has any ideas on how to get this working, that would be great!

[davidc]

Within your process definition, you can write some javascript to add an aspect (with sign-off properties) to the documents being signed off.  The Web Client can be customised to show those properties.

[rally]

Are there any examples or documentation to get me started?

[davidc]

In HEAD, there's an example lifecycle process definition which uses javascript to apply an aspect and set properties.

/projects/repository/config/alfresco/extension/lifecycle*

For reference, there's…

http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/WorkflowAdministration
http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/JavaScript_API

[richmitc]

Alternate suggestion for simple workflow…

Create folders as follow

4-Review
4.6.1-ToPublishCheckOut
4.6.2-ToPublishCheckIn
6-PublishOrig2PDF
7-Publish

Public can only see 7.
Only Reviewer (as coordinator) can see 4.6.1 and 4.6.2.
Only department can see 4 and 6.  Department can't edit in 4.
4 has a simple workflow rule with approval moving to 4.6.1.
4.6.1 has two rules - check out to 4.6.2 and move to 4.6.2.
4.6.2 has two rules - check in with minor change and comment "Approved".  Of course, who did it is also marked.  Second rule moves to 6.
6 has a rule to transform to PDF into 7.

I've only tried it with one reviewer having the coordinator role.  However, I believe it will work with more than one.

I also have a set of folders going back to 2-Updating for "Reject".

Unfortunately, given I can seemingly have only one simple workflow rule with two choices, I can't fully automate an "Approve for Internal Consumption" folder.  However, I do have a series of folders leading to "9-Internal".