Kentico CMS 5 Website Development: Beginner’s Guide

A clear, hands-on guide to build websites that get the most out of Kentico CMS 5’s many powerful features Create websites that meet real-life requirements using example sites built with easy-to-follow steps Learn from easy-to-use examples to build a dynamic website Learn best practices to make your site more discoverable Practice your Kentico CMS skills from organizing your content to changing the site’s look and feel Get going with example starter sites such as a corporate site, an e-commerce site, and a community-driven website to jumpstart your web development Written by Thom Robbins, the Web Evangelist for Kentico Software LLC

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Workflow management

Workflow is a way to automate a business process for publishing content. Using workflow allows you to delegate portions of the business process to different users or groups for approval. Kentico CMS allows you to use workflow for all documents, including uploaded files. The workflow engine organizes the process of content creation, updates, and publishing content. The following diagram shows an example document lifecycle with workflow. It’s important to keep in mind that document versioning is tightly bound with workflow and allows document comparison and version rollback.

Time for action – configuring workflow

The Kentico CMS workflow process is designed as a state machine. This means that workflows are event driven. A workflow contains three or more states, with only one state active at any given time. Based on an event, a transition is made to another state. Once a transition is made to the final state, the workflow is completed. Within each workflow step, members of authorized roles are allowed to modify, approve, or reject a document.

Now, let’s configure a workflow for the News folder.

1. In CMS Site Manager, select the Development tab, select Workflows, and click New workflow, as shown in the following screenshot:



2. For the New workflow, enter the Display Name as Approval and Code Name as Approval, as shown in the following screenshot:



3. Select the Steps tab and click on the New workflow step link, as shown in the following screenshot:



Quick tip
The Edit, Published, and Archived steps are automatically created for every workflow and can’t be deleted. These steps use the default system security.

4. Enter the following information and select OK.



5. Select the Roles tab and click Add roles, as shown in the following screenshot:

   

6. Select the CMS Desk Administrators role and select OK.
7. Select the Scope tab and click on the New workflow scope link, as shown in the following screenshot:

   

What is a workflow scope?
The workflow scope defines the folder, documents, and languages that are included in the workflow.

8. In the Starting alias path, click the Select button, as shown in the following screenshot:

   

9. Select News and then click the Select button, as shown in the following screenshot:



10. Select OK, as shown in the following screenshot, to save the workflow scope.