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Workflow Newbie needs help!

Former Member
Former Member
I'm pretty new to M-Files and have never implemented a workflow before. I need some advice.

I understand that workflow is just a set of states with some rules about which states can move to which other states, and a set of actions that are to be performed upon a state transition (e.g. email notifications etc).

I have the situation where a document may be entered into the M-Files vault by a sales guy. It will go in as "not approved" or some such status. Then the document will need to be approved by 3 other people (e.g. from the Finance, Commercial and Operations departments). These representatives need to be selected on a case-by-case basis, but will be other M-files users, most likely on concurrent licenses. Finally, the document will be approved and ready to be accepted finally into the repository by me (or one of my admin colleagues).

Can anyone give me the basic pointers to the best way to resolve the issue about selecting the three "approvers"? They are not always fixed and will need to be entered manually according to some big list of approvers I have on my desk (the list, not the approvers :)).

I imagine the sales guy dropping in the new doc, at which point pops up a custom dialog saying "enter Finance approver" etc and when he presses "ok", it enters the "awaiting finance approval" state and sends a notification to finance etc.

is something like this possible?

cheers
Dom
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  • Former Member
    Former Member
    So I was thinking a bit more about this, but I still don't really get it.

    I was thinking that the first Sales guy to enter the document into M-files has to specify who the other approvers will be setting the values of the three properties that hold the name of the approvers. This sales guy then approves the document by moving it into the "Awaiting Finance Approval" state, at which point a notification will be sent to the Finance approver, whose name was entered into the property field. This continues until all approvals are given.

    Having played about a little in the administrators tool in a test vault, I have the following issues:

    1) even when I restrict the possible state transitions on the Permissions tab of the workflow state, I can still add a document to the vault and change its state to anything I like without warning

    2) when I configure the workflow state to notify me when the document enters or leaves this state, I do not get any notification (presumably by email) even though I have configured my email address in my login account properties?

    3) When the Sales guy has approved the document by moving it to "awaiting Finance Approval", I want the finance guy, whose name is stored in one of the properties, to get an email notification. I want only this guy to be able to move the document to the next state (or at least I want to restrict the people who can use change this state, but the name of whoever changes the state has to be recorded, preferably in the approval property, which then becomes readonly). The assignee becomes the next approver. I don't have any idea how to achieve any of this.

    Any help?
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  • Former Member
    Former Member
    So I was thinking a bit more about this, but I still don't really get it.

    I was thinking that the first Sales guy to enter the document into M-files has to specify who the other approvers will be setting the values of the three properties that hold the name of the approvers. This sales guy then approves the document by moving it into the "Awaiting Finance Approval" state, at which point a notification will be sent to the Finance approver, whose name was entered into the property field. This continues until all approvals are given.

    Having played about a little in the administrators tool in a test vault, I have the following issues:

    1) even when I restrict the possible state transitions on the Permissions tab of the workflow state, I can still add a document to the vault and change its state to anything I like without warning

    2) when I configure the workflow state to notify me when the document enters or leaves this state, I do not get any notification (presumably by email) even though I have configured my email address in my login account properties?

    3) When the Sales guy has approved the document by moving it to "awaiting Finance Approval", I want the finance guy, whose name is stored in one of the properties, to get an email notification. I want only this guy to be able to move the document to the next state (or at least I want to restrict the people who can use change this state, but the name of whoever changes the state has to be recorded, preferably in the approval property, which then becomes readonly). The assignee becomes the next approver. I don't have any idea how to achieve any of this.

    Any help?
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