Workflows

Content lifecycle

Content lifecycle governs whether an item is visible in the frontend, and whether it is being edited. There are four lifecycle states of an item – master, temp, live and deleted. When persisting items in the database, Sitefinity CMS creates one row for each state. You can think of lifecycle states as separate versions of an item.
For more information, see For developers: Content lifecycle.

Workflows

You use workflows to manage the quality of the published content items and pages. You do this by creating first, second, and third level of approval for content items and pages. This way a content item can go through several different workflow statuses.

You can create a workflow for managing the lifecycle of content items and pages. You do that by creating first and second level of approval for content items and pages, or by uploading your custom workflow.

Types of workflow

The following types of workflow exist:

Type of workflow	Lifecycle steps	Rights
No approval workflow Standard lifecycle management	Create and Publish	All users with proper permissions.
One level of approval	Create and Send for Approval » Publish	Create and send for approval All users with proper permissions. Publish Users set as approvers when you defined the workflow.
Two levels of approval	Create and Send for Approval » Send for Publishing » Publish	Create and send for approval All users with proper permissions. Send for publishing Users set as first level of approvers when you defined the workflow. Publish Users set as second level of approvers when you defined the workflow.
Three levels of approval	Create and Send for Review » Send for Approval » Send for Publishing » Publish	Create and send for review All users with proper permissions. Send for approval Users set as first level of approvers when you defined the workflow. Send for publishing Users set as second level of approvers when you defined the workflow. Publish Users set as third level of approvers when you defined the workflow.

By default, you use the no approval workflow.

You can create one, two, or three level of approval for managing the lifecycle of content items and pages.

To define and manage workflows, in the main menu, click Administration» Workflow.
The Workflowpage appears, displaying a list of all created workflow definitions together with actions you can perform on them.
Use this page to create, edit, and manage workflow definitions.

This section contains

Define workflows

Use this procedure to create a workflow and set the content to which it applies and the responsible users.

Edit workflows

Use this procedure to change the properties of a workflow ant to delete workflows.

Activate and deactivate a workflow

Use this procedure to make a workflow active or inactive.

Workflow priorities

Workflow statuses

Use this section as a reference to all types of statuses a content item can have, as well as the icons that denote different statuses.

Actions available in a workflow

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