Creating an Approval Workflow

You can define a process whereby pages must be approved by someone other than the author before the page is published. The page author submits the page for approval and the approver either releases the page for publishing or rejects the page. You set up an approval workflow for pages only, but you can configure approval settings for areas and folders so that the objects within them inherit the approval settings. You can restore the inheritance chain if it is broken and you can also force inheritance on subordinate objects.

The approval workflow is as follows:

1. Page, area, or folder owners define the approval workflow, as defined in the following procedure.

2. Page authors submit pages for approval. The page author can cancel the request before the page is approved.

3. The system sends an e-mail to the defined approvers. The e-mail contains a link to the page, together with text supplied by the page author describing the changes.

4. The approver opens the link. Approve and Reject buttons appear in the toolbar.

   If the approver approves the page, the page is published. If the approver rejects the page, the page is marked as rejected and notification is sent to the page author.

If you have defined a schedule for the publication of a page, the page will only be published at the publication date. However, if the publication date arrives, and the page has not yet been approved, the page will not be published until it has been approved. In addition, if you have defined a removal date for the page, but the page is not approved by the removal date, the entire publication process is canceled.

You specify whether approval is needed for the page and then you define a list of approvers.