Workflow panel

Key point: Review or update the workflow of a document.

The workflow panel displays information about the current workflow of a document.

In the document view, this panel also indicates if the document has no workflow.

A document can only have one workflow.

When viewing a document, click the icon on the right sidebar to open this panel. If a document has an active workflow, the icon displays a red circle on the top right.

Document has no workflow

When a document doesn’t have a workflow, you see a message that there is no workflow associated with the document.

Click the Create workflow button to open the workflow dialog.

Document has an existing workflow

When a document has an existing workflow, the panel displays the workflow summary followed by workflow updates listed in chronological order.

The Update workflow button is at the bottom – click to open the workflow dialog.

Workflow summary

At the top of the panel, the workflow summary shows the current values of the status, priority, assignee, and Due date for the document. "--" indicates that there is no value for the corresponding heading. These values are based on the last comment in the workflow.

Workflow updates

The list of workflow updates let you see each step in the workflow in chronological order. The first update at the top of the panel is the initial step that created the workflow, while the last one is the most recent step.

Click the Most recent first switch, if you prefer to list the most recent updates first instead.

Selecting this option in the workflow panel also turns it on in your preferences page and the task panel. Deselecting it in any of these turns it off for all.

What follows is a description of the user interface for each step.

Author and date

The first line indicates the author and time of the update by displaying their avatar and name on the left and the relative time on the right. You can hold the cursor over the date to see the full date as a tooltip.

Workflow changes (if any)

It is followed by any change to the workflow. To help identify changes, only workflow values that the author has modified at that step are displayed. If a value is removed, it appears as strikethrough text.

For example, if an author updates the workflow of a document that has: the priority “High”, the status of “Complete”, and is assigned to “Jane Smith” – if the author changes the status to “Approved” and removes the assignee – the update only shows the status as “Approved”. The assignee “Jane” is shown using strikethrough text.

A workflow step doesn’t necessarily require any change to the workflow, a member might have only added some information about the status of the document.

Comment and labels (if any)

If the author leaves any comment or specifies any labels, they are displayed last.

How to find this page

This panel can be reached in several ways:

  • When viewing a document, click the icon on the right sidebar to open.
  • When viewing a list of workflows in the group tasks page or my tasks & workflows page.
  • From the search results, when the search result is a workflow.