Hello everybody, I am doing some tests with the Mayan workflows and there is a “use case” for which I can’t find a clear answer:
I would like to track the state of a process with a workflow that involves uploading more than one document of different document types… If I understand correctly, “smart links” are the way to group together documents of different types: i.e. I can use a specific value for a metadata that is common to all documents, so I was planning to assign the workflow to the first document and then have it change state when documents of a specific type are added (with the correct metadata value). I thought that this could be implemented using “transition triggers”, but looking at the options and at the docs I don’t see how this could work…
Am I on the right track? Or is there something different that I can’t see?
This would not work. You can force it by as you mention, attaching the workflow to one document and then handle the state of multiple documents from that single workflow. However this would be a hack and not reliable.
Mayan attaches a workflow to a single document. This is by design because Mayan is a document management system. Allowing general workflows, or workflows for business processes would make Mayan a different product.
It is not out of the realm of possibilities, but not in the short term roadmap to support something like this.
Mayan (the project) is composed of several internal and external groups. Since Mayan is not a monolithic program (it is actually a platform), there is a group working to adapt it to manage things other than just documents. Their solution, (once is production ready) could be what you need or lead to something that works for your use case.
But for the time being, it is not possible to change the workflows to document association.
thank you for the answer. It is good to know that - for now - these kind of things are probably better dealt with by using an external web app that can integrate with Mayan through the API.
Keep up the good work!