WORKFLOWS IN CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

Pedro Pico and Alberto Rodrigues da Silva

Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Portugal

Keywords: Workflow, Automation, Content Management System (CMS), Workflow Management System (WMS).

Abstract: Workflow is a popular concept in nowadays. Organizations try to implement Workflows that are flexible

and optimized, but the simple realization of Workflows inside an organization is not always a simple task.

Thereby the perception of its definition and endeavours can bring several benefits. One tool that helps to

structure and optimize organization’s business processes are Content Management Systems, CMS. These

applications provide a separation between content and services. When these two concepts meet in a CMS

which supports Workflow, organizations may take advantage, becoming more agile, flexible and dynamic,

while their tasks are automated. Ultimately these tools will help to increase the organization’s productivity

and establish the desired business processes.

1 INTRODUCTION

Workflow is an abstract concept that is currently

relevant within Software Engineering as well as

Organizational Engineering. Prove is the significant

number of companies that is increasingly embracing

it. Due to the richness and abstraction of the concept,

Workflow is mentioned by Software Industry

endeavors, meaning that it can be applied successful

to Software application design and development.

Bearing that in mind, the Workflow Management

Coalition, WFMC http://www.wfmc.org is the

reference organization responsible for the standard

specification of Workflow engines and related

specifications. The WFMC defines Workflow as

“the computerized facilitation or automation of a

business process, in whole or part”( David

Hollingsworth, 1995). On the other hand, Marshak

defines Workflow as “The automation of the

processes we use every day to make our business

through. A Workflow Application does

automatically the sequence of actions, activities and

tasks to run a process, including all the routing

within the stages of each instance of a process, as

well as the tools to manage the process itself” , (R

onni T. Marshak, 1995).

Automation and business processes are concepts

that are mentioned on both definitions, leading to a

first definition of Workflow as a “business process

automation”.

WFMC still introduces the concept of a

Workflow Management System, as being a “system

that completely defines, manages and executes the

workflow through the execution of software whose

order of execution is driven by a computer

representation of the workflow logic”, (David

Hollingsworth, 1995).

These definitions indicate the Workflow logic

has to be represented in a formal language, so that

running software may be able to build, manage and

execute that workflow logic.

On the other hand, Content Management

Systems, CMS (are also known as ECMS

(Enterprise Content Management Systems)), (James

Robertson, 2002), are an emergent class of software

systems that promotes the management of structured

and unstructured business data (aka “content”) of

organizations, such as records of customers or links,

as well as documents, pieces of text, images or

videos. CMS provides the following benefits:

extensibility, modularization and platform reuse;

content and presentation independence; easy

management and publication of contents; integrated

support of multi-language contents; integrated

support of users and access control management.

We identify in this paper some application

scenarios where workflow technology can be

applied with advantages. In particular, we discuss

several issues concerning the use and adoption of

workflows features into the domain of CMS

platforms and respective CMS-based applications.

232

Pico P. and Rodrigues da Silva A. (2008).

WORKFLOWS IN CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS.

In Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies, pages 232-235

DOI: 10.5220/0001519802320235

 SciTePress

2 WORKFLOW’S APPLICATION

SCENARIOS

Workflow concepts and technologies can be applied

into different application scenarios, such as (1)

system integration support, (2) user interface and (3)

content workflow in CMS (Content Management

Systems).

Workflow Support in System’s Integration.

Information System’s high-level abstractions and

business service’s interactions may be seen as a

Workflow system, (Michael Rowell, 2001).

Currently, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA),

Dirk Krafzig, 2005, is an example of this approach,

in which technology is only a tool for orchestration

of business processes and services. According to the

SOA approach there should be a Service repository

which agglomerates services – which according to

the OASIS organisation is defined as "a mechanism

to enable access to one or more capabilities, where

the access is provided using a prescribed interface

and is exercised consistent with constraints and

policies as specified by the service description.".

These services, in their turn, communicate among

them and with front and back-end applications,

through a communication channel. To accomplish

this, each service application must expose a

programming or computing interface. Workflow

plays the role of orchestrating the interactions

amongst all these services. Microsoft Biztalk and

BEA WebLogic are the leading application servers

that support SOA in the industry.

Workflow Support in User Interface Software

Applications. The Workflow concept can also be

applied to the end-user interface definitions for

software applications. The links between interaction

spaces (e.g. web page, window screen) are events

that may be triggered by human or third-party

applications. For example, the submission of a web

form is a human interaction, while the presentation

of a RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed is a third-

party application interaction.

To make the most out of this vision of software

design and implementation, some companies have

been publishing Interface Workflow Managers. This

functionality is usually associated with the software

developing process since the tools that support these

features are usually within the Integrated

Developing Environments, IDE, of the existing

platforms. With Microsoft Visual Studio, (Dino

Esposito, 2002), the users have the ability to

visually edit and see their application’s interfaces as

a tree of nodes, in which each node is an interaction

space and the connection among nodes define the

hierarchy of the nodes in the tree. On the other hand,

Sun released in 2006 JAVA Web Studio Creator,

(Gail Anderson, Paul Anderson, 2006), supporting

the same functionality for J2EE applications.

Workflow Support in CMS. Content Management

Environments are also a relevant application for

Workflows. These Systems evolved from meta-

applications and frameworks which were used to

produce other applications. The urge for Documental

Management Applications left only one step further

what would later be known as Content Management

Applications. The difference between these two is

the object that is managed, while the former manage

documents, the latter manage contents, which is an

abstraction in which documents can be included.

In these environments a Workflow can be seen as

the set of stages that content may assume since its

creation until it is made available. Consider the

following example: (1) a document is created and

submitted to an application; (2) then it is approved in

chain by a set of users; (3) until it becomes visible

for all convenient users.

In this example the stage transitions are mainly

triggered by human interaction. Users trigger stage

transitions so that contents may evolve through the

hierarchical structure of the organization, being

progressively approved by users with more and more

responsibilities. This type of Workflow systems has

to make sure that if content is not approved by a

user, it must return to its previous stage. Stage

transitions also have to be able to trigger automatic

actions. For instance, sending e-mails so users may

be notified of pending decisions they have to make.

Stage transitions may not only be triggered by

human interaction, but also by third-party

applications.

3 CMS AND WORKFLOW

Content Management Systems promote the clear

separation between contents and services. The latter

are responsible for content’s presentation,

manipulation and access, while the former are the

artefacts that are passed throughout services.

Pictures, texts, links, news, videos, and documents

are all examples of contents.

The main goal of Workflows in CMS is to

provide a path for contents since their creation, until

WORKFLOWS IN CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

233

they are made available for other users to see – often

defined as publication. The path can be described by

a set of consecutive evaluations, usually referred as

stages, in which users, defined by a specific business

role may, or may not, approve contents.

For example, in a newspaper, each article, after

written by a journalist, must be reviewed by the

journalist’s supervisor. If the article is approved, it

will go on to the next evaluation, and an upper

supervisor will have to evaluate the article;

otherwise it will return to the previous stage, and the

journalist will have to rewrite the article. The

evaluations will go on in chain until eventually some

supervisor will approve the article’s publication.

A Workflow in a CMS is exactly the chain of

evaluations that content undergoes since its creation

until its publication. It is now assumed a Workflow

has several stages. While each stage is associated

with one role – set of users – who are responsible for

evaluating the content – either approving it, or

declining it.

In the newspaper example, when a supervisor

declines content, the content will return to the

previous stage so it can be reviewed or rewritten

again. If, on the other hand, the content is approved

it will move on to the next stage. If it achieves the

last stage, the content will be published. While in the

physical world articles are printed in paper, in the

digital world contents may either be created or

replace existing versions of the content. As an

example it can be considered any page available in

the wikipedia web site, http://wikipedia.org. In this

web site each page may be replaced by a new

version, as well as new pages may be created. Pages

are the contents in this example.

The multiplicity of instances of the same content

that have to co-exist lead to the need of content

versioning. This happens since at least two versions

of the same content will be needed. One that is

published, and thereby the one all users can see, and

another one which is evaluated by supervisors, and

thereby available for supervisors to see. The former

will be referred as the published version, while the

latter will be referred as the draft version. This can

lead us to the conclusion that content is

characterized by its version.

Finally, there is also another aspect to be added,

the possible existence of predefined actions that may

occur every time a stage is achieved or departed

from. A simple notification to the author every time

the content he submitted is approved by a supervisor

is an example of what a predefined action can be.

Figure 1 illustrates how the mentioned concepts are

connected in a CMS Workflow Domain model.

4 CONCLUSIONS

The adoption of Workflow management systems is

urging in the Software industry, allowing the

automation of content’s production and integration,

This will lead to an optimization of the

organisation’s business processes.

CMS platforms with Workflow features show

how organizations can better support their business

processes, regarding agility and flexibility, since

they provide a beneficial separation between

contents and services, allowing the business users to

manage both in an easy and independent way.

In the CMS domain a Workflow has several

stages. While each stage has one responsible role

and a set of predefined actions that may be triggered

either when the content arrives or leaves the stage.

Finally the content, which is the artefact that goes

through the stages of the Workflow, has to be

identified by a version, since in the most simplistic

scenario at least two instances of the same content

will have to co-exist. Figure 1 ilustrates the domain

model of Workflow in CMS.

Workflows can be used in CMS is such

scenarios as documental management, e-commerce

and submission of articles. Documental management

concentrates on documents as its contents. The life

cycle of a document includes its creation, edition,

configuration of its visibility, deletion, etc. All such

operations can have associated Workflows that

provide automatism and flexibility to these

processes. E-commerce functionality can also take

advantage of Workflow support. For instance in a

purchase tracking mechanism, actions as the locking

of an item, the payment checking mechanism, the

client notification, and the notification of the

warehouse which is supposed to send the item to the

customer, can all be included in a Workflow which

is responsible for the coordination of each of these

steps. The last example of Workflow functionality in

a CMS is the publishing of articles. In this Use Case

scenario a user can create an article and submit it to

a CMS. The CMS can then, by means of a

Workflow, deliver the article to a supervisor, who

will revise it and either accept it, publishing it, or

declining it, sending feed-back for the user to

improve his article. The described scenarios show

the relevance and applicability of Workflows not

only to business processes, but in CMS.

CMS that support Workflow provide their users

a relevant advantage, since steps that that are

repeated very often may be automated, saving time

and allowing the users to concentrate on the most

important part of their jobs: to focus on their

business tasks creating business value for their

organizations.

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Figure 1: Main concepts of CMS’s Workflow Support.

REFERENCES

David Hollingsworth, 1995. The Workflow Management

Coalition Specification reference model.

Ronni T. Marshak, 1995. Workflow: applying automation

to group processes, Groupware: technology and

applications, Prentice Hall International (UK) Ltd.,

Hertfordshire, UK.

Michael Rowell, 2001. Understanding EAI: Enterprise

Application Integration, Sams, Indianapolis, Indiana.

Dirk Krafzig, 2005. Karl Banke, Dirk Slama,. Enterprise

SOA, Prentice Hall.

Dino Esposito, 2002. Building Web Solutions with

ASP.NET and ADO.NET, Microsoft Press.

Gail Anderson, Paul Anderson, 2006. Java Studio Creator

Field Guide, Sun Microsystems Press.

James Robertson, 2002. How to evaluate a content

management system, KM Column.

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