Workflows
When products are imported to Dynamicweb PIM, they typically don’t have a lot of related information – in many cases they are imported with only a product number and a name. Invariable, the products must go through an enrichment process before they can be published across your different channels.
The enrichment process can be controlled using a workflow, which is a set of steps that the product must move through in a fixed order. This ensures that all the relevant information is added before the product is published, and that information is added in the correct order (e.g. primary language descriptions before translations).
A workflow consist of:
- A number of states – e.g. New product, Ready for description, Ready for translation, etc.
- A set of availability instructions per state, which control which states a product can move to from the current state
- Optionally, a set of state notifications for notifying key people when a product enters a new state
Workflows are created under Settings > PIM > Workflows - see here.
Once a workflow has been created, you will have access to a workflow state field when editing products in product edit or multi-edit mode (Figure 1.1).
Start a workflow by selecting a state for a product and save. This triggers any state notifications for the state, and the product can now move to and from the states defined in the workflow configuration.
By default, all workflows can be selected - but you can limit the states available by selecting a particular workflow at the group level (Figure 1.2) - use the green checkmark to force the workflow value on all subgroups. If a product is a member of several groups with explicit workflows set, both workflows will be available when editing the product.
