Skip to content

Workflow stages

Workflow stages are the building blocks of a workflow. You need to create at least one stage before you can create a workflow.

Workflow stages

Stages determine:

  • What actions to run when an item enters or exits a workflow stage
  • The access levels of users or groups within that stage.

In most cases, actions are run when an item enters a stage. For example, you add a scheduled move action to run on entering a stage so that it is enabled as soon as an item enters that stage. However, if you set a scheduled move action to run on leaving a stage, it is never run. The most common type of actions to run on leaving a stage are email actions, when you want to notify users that an item has exited a workflow stage.

Note

Some actions need to be run in a specific order. For example:

  • A scheduled move action must always be the final action in a workflow stage, because any actions scheduled after a scheduled move action is not run.
  • You cannot run a version action before a publish action because you cannot save versions of draft items.
  • If you use a custom action, you can run the custom action before the email action is run, so that the draft content item is in a state ready to be reviewed by an approver.

Note

The access settings that are defined in the properties section of the workflow stage form are the security settings that are applied to items during a workflow, not the Security section of a workflow stage. The Security section defines who has access to the workflow stage item itself.

Reject stages

In addition to the workflow stages that make up a workflow, workflow stages are also used as part of rejecting an item. When an item is rejected, a reject stage can be triggered that runs predefined actions. When the actions are run, the item is returned to the first stage of the workflow.