Workflow options in Confluence

[#1]

Workflows in Confluence is a) subject to many a question here, b) a pet peeve of mine, so when @Ralf Schmelter asked his question I quickly jotted down the options. Turns out, Ralf meant smth else but hey, I've got a post written :) 

Anyway, let's take a quick look at workflow options in Confluence.

For the purpose of this piece, a workflow is a process that designates pages as being in a different stage of readiness and/or changes the page's functional relationship to other pages/apps. The basic idea is to separate your drafts from the finalized content.

Of course, I'm keen to hear other ideas and solutions, so please, share them in the comments.

Option one

For basic workflows, you can use Confluence 'Page status' feature. It doesn't do much but it can provide a basic information about ... the page status. Statuses are customizable.

You can think of page statuses as labels that appear on top of the page.

https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/add-a-status-to-your-page-or-blog/

Having said that... there are apps that can use a specific status as a cue to perform an action, and THEN you can use Statuses as a de-facto active workflow tool.

In Premium and Enterprise Confluence, you can use statuses to trigger automation rules.

Option two

Confluence Live Edit mode (currently in beta) treats any page as a viewable draft until the page is Published/Updated. It can perform the workflow function.

Option three

Comala Document Approval - it's the simplest possible workflow app - Review/Approved with Review being automatically applied to new pages. 

At Emplifi, we're using this app in a chain with Comala Publishing, Scroll Documents and Scroll Viewport to create our doc site.

Option four

A full fledged workflow app

• two more Comala apps by Appfire - Management and Workflows
• B1nary's Breeze
• AppFox's Workflows for Confluence
• probably more :) 

This is what you want if you have strict approval process, need to meet industry compliance requirements etc.

Option five - a little workflow hack ;) 

Use different app for basic workflow. I mentioned Page Status feature. An app called Space Sync for Confluence does exactly what it says - it sync content between two (or more) spaces.

The idea here is to use one space for your drafts (Source), then, when the page is finalized, you sync it to another space (Target). Target will have broad permissions but read only. Source will have permissions for people who can edit and no viewing permissions for others.

The cool thing that Space Sync can use Page Status to trigger syncing of a page. If you combine with Pages Manager (free app), you can change the status on multiple pages at once and trigger bulk sync. In other words, moving pages from draft to approved.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

General note: What's important to realize is that workflow apps typically work with publishing, syncing apps or deploy the two-space method to separate your working area, Space where the workflow happens, from the Space where content is consumed.

[Matteo Gubellini _SoftComply_]

Hey, you forgot about us!

SoftComply Document Manager 

More of a heavy duty document management system for regulated industries.

[Kristian Klima]

@Matteo Gubellini _SoftComply_ 

I wrote "probably more" :) 

Thank you for this, there's so many apps on Cloud and they're emerging really fast, it's hard for a mortal to keep an eye on the development.

Full-scale options would surely deserve their own piece.

[Yulia Lenina _AppFox_]

Kristian, thank you for a quick action with creating this article.

And, of course, thank you for mentioning our app as well - Workflows for Confluence by AppFox. Indeed, one of the best practices is to use 2 separate spaces - one for Drafts and one for Approved documents which are for public usage. This way you make sure that the ready documents do not mix with drafts, and accessed by the right people. Our app has a built-in functionality to automatically publish a document to another space once it's approved.

Other advantages, which I described in this article.

[Dmitriy Panyukov _Stiltsoft_]

@Kristian Klima thank you for the post!
Let me fit our app in the "probably more" category too)
In Handy Macros for Confluence, we are trying to expand on a native Page Status, which is an excellent feature, with our Handy Page Status. Besides the ability to indicate the page status on top of Confluence pages, you can search for pages in a certain status by multiple criteria using our Page Status Report.
Additionally, you can use our Handy Status with its label synchronization feature to set up automation to notify you through Slack or email about status changes.

[Kristian Klima]

@Yulia Lenina _AppFox_ 

I'm familiar with your app, tested it, and had a couple of calls and email exchanges with the Appfox team :) 

And I really love the idea of integrating workflows with the two space approach within a single app - it also sync third-part app content, such as Scroll Documents metadata and Variants macros, which is great for using it with Scroll Viewport.

But I'd like you to read this Community question thread and/or refer to your team about the details of my feedback. C'mon, you have a convertible fox, you can have convertible links :) 

[marc -Collabello--Phase Locked-]

Another workflow option is to use the built in Confluence Automations (if you have Confluence Premium).

[Yulia Lenina _AppFox_]

@Kristian Klima wow, I am happy you have our Plushy, hope you love it:) I know that you had communication with my colleagues, and great to hear that you tested our app. I will have a look at the article you're mentioning, thanks:)

[Aron Gombas _Midori_]

You also forgot our Better Content Archiving and Analytics app, a popular option that has been constantly developed for 10+ years for these use cases.

While this app also focuses on content workflows, it takes a automated approach: instead of users transition pages and blog posts between statuses, it is the app that does the transition! For example, when a page gets older than 100 days, the app will set that to "To update" status automatically. If a user edits the page, it will automatically transition to "Up-to-date" again. (It is a very simple example used as an illustration.)

You can affect the status using various quick actions, get Confluence reports for the whole site or for individual spaces, send custom notifications, execute custom automations, and a lot more.

Due to its flexibility the app can help to implement review workflows, content quality control, auto-archiving, retention and so much more. Learn more here

[Kristian Klima]

@Aron Gombas _Midori_ Thanks!

I admit, I'm looking at the matter from a rather specific viewpoint - In my world of product documentation/tech writing, there are rather specific factors to consider

• Time does not outdate product documentation content. Product development does. I worked on mainframe software where hundreds of documentation pages written in the 1980s were perfectly up to date. Weird as it sounds but then mainframe world is weird. And wonderful :) 
• Similarly, the page that nobody looked at for months is usually perfectly OK and needs to stay in the doc set. If the feature is so obvious users don't need that page, it still document a product feature.
• When I'm working on a new page/draft, I need to be in charge when the page moves from draft to review, from review to complete, and when it gets published to the Viewport site.

So the time-driven approach to docs is not for me :) 

Having said that, Intranet sites, compliance requirements for specific industries, that's a different matter.

[Aron Gombas _Midori_]

@Kristian Klima I understand your point.

Please note in our most typical workflow (liked by many!) a page that automatically becomes "To review" after N days, will be reviewed a human user and he/she can decide to manually rewrite it or leave it completely unchanged and manually confirm that it is still valid. In that sense, this workflows combines automation and human intelligence to keep information in "good shape".

[Kristian Klima]

@Aron Gombas _Midori_ For others it means that someone needs to spend time and effort to review the page - all for 'just in case'.

Again, it's just a different approach that's driven by the goals, type of content, and other factors.

[Yulia Lenina _AppFox_]

@Kristian Klima thanks for sharing your use case, very interesting!

You're completely right - it depends on the industry and other factors. Indeed, our customers from regulated industries often use the page expiration on date, as it's required by compliance rules. When the expiration date is set in "Workflows for Confluence", a user can decide what stage the page should transition and who should be notified. As an option, the page can expire if someone edited it, and, again, where the page should transition if it happens and who should be notified.