Approval Workflow Overview

A Workflow enables you to use statuses for work items, so you can track their progress through stages from creation to completion.

For example, you may have a second user who reviews your work items. Using a workflow with approved and rejected statuses, the reviewer can set a status on the work item as appropriate.

Prerequisites 

You must be working in a work group which in which an administrator has activated workflow.

Overview

Workflows define a series of stages through which a work item progresses, from creation to completion. The current stage of a work item, the work item status, is displayed on the work item's details pane. The work item status enables you to monitor and update the progress of a work item through the workflow.

If you often create work items that require approval, your Site Administrator can create or edit a work group to enable workflows. You can then update the status of new work items in that work group.

Workflows enable you to approve or reject work items. When your Site Administrator assigns workflows to your work group, a status is displayed in the details pane of new work items. This enables you to update the status of work items using a set of predefined statuses:

  • Pending — Work item is awaiting an Approved or Rejected status
  • Approved — Work item is approved
  • Rejected — Work item is rejected

You can update the status of a work item at any time. When a new work item is created, the status is set to Pending by default. If you open a new interview in a work item that has already been Approved, the status of the work item will return to Pending to reflect the state of the new work item version.

Common Tasks

Among others, workflows enables you to perform the following common tasks:

Common Reference Topics

Among others, the following reference topics may relate to this conceptual area: