Step 3: Configuration — Add workflow transitions

A workflow transition moves a document from a source workflow state to a target workflow state. The type of workflow transition depends on the type of source and target workflow states.

Basic transition: This transition moves a document from a standard state to another standard state or from a draft state to another draft state. No version control operation happens during this type of transition.
New versioning transition: This transition moves a document from a standard state to another standard state. During the transition, AODocs creates a new version of the document.
Check-out transition: This transition links a standard state to a draft state. During the transition, AODocs checks out the document. This means the document has two versions:

A draft version that is moved to the target draft state of the transition. The draft version can then transition to other draft states if you configure basic transitions.
A main version that stays in the source standard state until the draft version of the document goes through a check-in transition.

Learn more: What is check-out / check-in?

Check-in transition: This transition links a draft state to a standard state. During the transition, AODocs checks in the document.
This means the draft version of the document initially in the source draft state becomes the current version and is moved to the target standard state. The main version of the document (in the standard state at the time of check-out) becomes a previous version.
Discard checkout: This transition discards the draft version of the document. The main version of the document becomes the current version.

Note: If you don’t need to implement version control in your workflow, use standard states and basic transitions.

Structure of a workflow transition

Regardless of its type, a workflow transition is always composed of:

a target state — this is the new workflow state of the document if the transition occurs
a condition for the transition to occur — this can be a manual action or an automatic trigger, such as a time period or a specific document property value

Tips: You can set automatic transitions:
- to trigger a reminder notification after a certain number of days
- to trigger a reminder notification before a Due Date (Date field property)
- to tag a document as expired after the Expiration Date (Date field property)
- to sort documents in different workflow states, according to the value of a property
- to send an error message when a property field is empty
- to refine/adapt/activate a validation workflow subpath depending on a property (such as department or amount of money)

Configure manual transitions

Manual transitions require one or more users to validate the document by manually pressing a custom workflow button.

Define the workflow validators

The person validating a manual workflow can be a:

user email address
Google Group: email address of Google Groups in the domain
custom property with a Field type “Person”
system role: Document Creator, Last Update Author, Administrator, Contributor, Reader
library custom role

Important recommendations:
- When configuring a workflow transition, you can define the validators directly in the workflow configuration section or with a pre-defined role.
- AODocs recommends using roles as validators of manual transitions. This is useful to set workflow validators, workflow notifications and workflow permissions.
- Make sure you have configured roles before adding them to a workflow.

Configure workflow user actions

Workflow user actions have the name of the actions that workflow validators see in their interface (AODocs or Google Drive).

They see the workflow buttons in the user interface if they can perform workflow actions.

They can also perform workflow actions from Google Drive in Team Folders and Secured Folders.

Before configuring manual workflow transitions, define the wording of the actions available to validators.

1. Open the library administration interface and select Workflows.

2. Under User actions in Workflows, select the + icon to add a new custom user action.

Notes: By default, several user actions are proposed, such as Approve, Reject and Escalate.

3. In the Add a user action pop-up:

enter the User action and the Completed user action
you can select the Mandatory comment checkbox to force validators to enter a comment when they perform a workflow action
you can enter help text for the workflow validator, which appears in the Leave a comment field in the Perform workflow action pop-up

4. Press Create.

Notes:
- User actions are available to workflow validators in the user interface.
- Completed user actions are displayed in the comment section of the document page and in the workflow configuration.

5. Select the Edit button if you need to update the User action, Completed user action, Comment text or the Mandatory comment checkbox.

Configure workflow transitions

1. Under Workflows in the library administration interface, open the workflow you want to configure.

2. In the source workflow state, choose the type of transition you want to create:

+ New transition
+ New versioning transition
+ New check-out
+ New check-in
+ New discard checkout

The type of transition depends on the type of source and target workflow states.

Note: You can add multiple transitions from and to a state. However, from a given state there can be only one transition with all members of selected.

3. Choose the target state from the Transition to drop-down list.

4. Fill in the condition for the transition to occur: for a manual action, the condition is composed of an action verb and the validators of the workflow action.

5. When choosing the validator, select a role, a specific user or a Google Group. We recommend that you use roles, since they are easier to manage.
Learn more: Configure roles

6. Define whether the document needs to be approved by:

Any single member of the validators — the first validator who performs the workflow action will transition the document into the target state
All members of the validators — the document will transition only when all the validators have performed the workflow action.
Learn more: Perform workflow actions

7. To delete a transition, press Delete at the end of a transition line.

8. Press Save or Save and Close.

Configure transitions with automatic conditions

The AODocs workflow engine can automatically move the document into a different state when certain conditions are met.

In the source workflow state, choose the type of transition you want to create:

+ New transition
+ New versioning transition
+ New check-out
+ New check-in
+ New discard checkout

The type of transition depends on the type of source and target workflow states.

2. Choose the target state from the Transition to drop-down list.

3. Fill in the condition for the transition to occur.

For an automatic transition, you can choose a condition based on:

date, time, or duration:

from specified date/time
before/after a specific date (document property)
from a specific date (document property)
after a certain duration

the value of a document property

Note: You can choose the document properties from all the custom properties and some system properties, such as Creation date, Document Creator and Last Update.

4. Specify the condition rule depending on the condition chosen.
Learn more: Format of automatic transitions and examples

5. Organize your transitions in the right order by drag-and-drop.
When entering a workflow state, AODocs checks each transition from top to bottom.The first transition that can be triggered is executed. If two transitions based on document’s properties are valid, the first one in the list of transitions is executed first.

Tip: If you are using automatic transitions based on a document property with the field type Category hierarchically organized in subcategories, the workflow transitions should be organized with the lowest subcategory values first.

6. If you need to delete a transition, press Delete at the end of the transition.

7. Press Save or Save and Close.

Format of automatic transitions and examples

Here are all the condition rules you can apply for a condition based "on date, time and duration".

Format	Comment	Example
“from specified date/time”
MM/DD/YY HH:mm	The date can be chosen from a calendar	At the end of the year, all active contracts are transferred into the Archived workflow state.
“before/after a specific date (document property)”
xxx min before Date field property hours after days	You can’t set an automatic transition with less than 5 minutes. The Date field property is chosen from a drop-down list with all the system and custom properties with a “Date”, Type field only.	Contracts go to the "Soon to be expired" state 30 days before the "Expiration Date" or 1 year after the "Signature Date" of the contract, to trigger a reminder notification.
“from a specific date (document property)”
Date field property	The Date field property is chosen from a drop-down list with all the system and custom properties with a “Date”, Type field only.	Contracts automatically go to the "Archived" state when the "Expiration Date" has been reached.
“after a certain duration”
xxx min hours days months	You can’t set an automatic transition with less than 5 minutes.	A reminder can be sent every week if the contract has not been approved yet.

Here are all the condition rules you can apply for a condition based "on document property":

Field Type property	Condition Choice	Condition Value	Example
String	Empty	-	If the field "Context" contains the word "important", the head of Department has to sign the contract.
	Not empty	-
	Contains	Sub-string
	Equal to	String
	Not equal to	String
Text	Empty	-
	Not empty	-
	Contains	Sub-string
	Equal to	String
	Not equal to	String
Integer	Greater than or equal to	Integer	If the "Amount" of the contract is more than 2000$, the contract has to be approved by the Financial department.
	Less than or equal to	Integer
	Strictly greater than	Integer
	Strictly less than	Integer
	Empty	-
	Not empty	-
	Equal to	Integer
	Not equal to	Integer
Decimal	Greater than or equal to	Decimal
	Less than or equal to	Decimal
	Strictly greater than	Decimal
	Strictly less than	Decimal
	Empty	-
	Not empty	-
	Equal to	Decimal
	Not equal to	Decimal
URL	Empty	-	If the "Website of the customer" is empty, the contract goes back to the "Draft" state.
	Not empty	-
	Equal to	URL
	Not equal to	URL
Boolean	true		If a revision of the contract is needed, the contract goes back to the "Draft" state to be revised.
Boolean	false
Person	Empty	-	If the "Approvers" field is empty, the contract is signed directly by the Head of the Department.
	Not empty	-
	Equal to	email address
	Not equal to	email address
	Is included in	group or role
Category	Empty	-	If the "Type of contract" is a "Time & Material", the contract has to be approved by a specialist.
	Not empty	-
	Equal to	Value of category
	Not equal to	Value of category

Type and structure of workflow transitions

Types of workflow transition