About Knowledge Workflows

There are two types of knowledge workflows that can be processed in the Knowledge Console: Article workflow and Suggestion workflow. Users with the following actions can manage knowledge workflows: Knowledge Workflows- View, Create, Edit, Delete. These actions are part of the out-of-the-box Knowledge Manager role.

Article workflows review the content created by authors from the Knowledge Console. In a workflow, you define the knowledge folders and the types of articles in the knowledge folders that need to be processed by the article workflows. An article processed by a workflow can go through different stages before it is published and becomes part of the Knowledge Console. Each stage in the workflow can have different contributors who act on the article and move it forward, or send it back for edits. At each step in the workflow, notifications can be sent to submitters and owners as articles go through workflows or are sent back to the draft stage, as well as to the contributors when articles are available to work on.

Suggestion workflows apply to newly suggested articles or feedback on existing articles, submitted via the Advisor Desktop as well as the knowledge portals. These suggestions pass through the suggestion workflow and are reviewed by the assigned contributors.

Key Elements of a Knowledge Workflow

Default Knowledge Workflows

The system comes with the following knowledge workflows by default:

Default Workflow: This workflow applies to all articles, except suggested articles that are not associated with another workflow. The default workflow comes with the Draft and Published Stages- which means that an article can be created and published directly without any review. Knowledge Base Managers can enhance this workflow by adding custom stages and reviewers.
Default Suggestion Workflow: This workflow applies to all suggestions that are not associated with another workflow. This workflow comes with the New, Review, and Close stages. There is a default user group for contributors in the Review stage named Suggestion Reviewers. Users who review suggestions processed by the Default Suggestion Workflow should be added to the Suggestion Reviewers group by an administrator.

Knowledge Managers

Knowledge Managers are authors with the Knowledge Manager role who has the authority to create article types and article templates, create knowledge workflows, and apply workflows to folders.

Owners of Articles

An owner is the user who owns the article. When an article is created for the first time, the owner is the same as the submitter of the article. The owner of the article can be changed at any point later.

Submitters of Articles

A submitter is any user who works on an article draft and sends the article to the knowledge workflow. The user who starts the process of sending the article through the knowledge workflow automatically becomes the submitter of the article. At a later point, if another user edits the same article and sends the article through the workflow again, that user becomes the new submitter of the article.

Contributors

Contributors are users who are part of the different stages of the workflows. They can move the articles forward, or send the article back to previous stages in the workflow. Contributors in the final stage get to publish the articles.

Stages

Stages allow you to create a multi-step knowledge workflow. Each stage in the workflow can represent the type of review that needs to happen for the articles before they are published. For each stage, you define the users and user groups that can work on the articles in that stage, as well as any users or groups who should be able to skip that stage in the workflow. When a user group is selected as a contributor, any user in the group can work on the article to move it to the next stage. Likewise, when a user group is given skip permissions for a stage, any user in the group can skip this stage when sending articles through the workflow. For more information, see About Stages.

Notifications

Workflows can be configured to send internal and external notifications to submitters and owners of articles and contributors in each stage of the workflow. Submitters and owners get notifications when articles are moved from one stage to another, when articles are sent back to the draft stage for edits, and when the submitted article is published. Contributors get a notification when new articles are available to work on. Users can be notified in two ways - Internal notifications and External emails. See Managing Notifications for Knowledge Workflows.

My Work List

The My Work list is accessible from the Navigation Menu. This list displays all the articles that are assigned to contributors by the knowledge workflows. Here, you can view the current stage of the workflow in which the article resides, as well as its progression within the workflow. Contributors work on the articles in this list to move them to the next stage in the workflow. If the content of the article is not satisfactory, they can send the article back to a previous stage for edits. The My Work list does not display the articles that are sent back to the Draft stage. Submitted articles are located in the My Work list.

The My Work list can also be filtered by Name, Description, Current Stage and Article Type. Clicking the Filter button opens the Filter window where you can select the desired filters for the My Work list.

The Filter window

Planning a Knowledge Workflow

Decide and create the types of articles the workflow will process.
Decide and create the knowledge folders that the workflow will process.
Decide and create the stages you want to use in the workflow.
Decide and create the users and user groups who will be contributors in the various stages of the workflow. Make sure these users have at least the View folder and Edit article permissions on the folders that will be processed by the workflow.
Plan the notifications you want to send out for the workflows and create the articles to be used in these notifications.
Create the Knowledge Workflow.
Apply the workflow to specific knowledge folders and article types.