Can a workflow steps and users for the steps be controlled by contributors?

Question

Is it possible to have a workflow that allows contributors to select list of steps and users in the steps? The universal set of steps and users for steps can be defined in the designer mode. But the contributors can decide for a particular content item what steps need to be skipped and the users for the step. But atleast one approver step is mandatory. This is some strange requirement that our client is expecting. Is this possible?
Regards,
Pratap

Answer 1

Hi Pratap,
Short answer: Yes. This has been possible since the Stellent 5.x days (and possibly earlier). We can help you with this if you need services - see our Workflow offerings here: http://bit.ly/b2Ydv6
Or you can do it yourself. For the details you should see "Setting Up Ad Hoc Step Users" in the workflow admin guide (pp 147, section 9-13) http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E10316_01/cs/cs_doc_10/documentation/admin/workflow_guide_10gr3en.pdf
Remember that a "step" is just a container for a certain group of users to take action on certain kinds of content. So you can have one step but if you loop over it 3 times with a different set of users each time you have a defacto 3 step workflow.
You need 2 things:
1) the workflow plumbing for the selection of the next "step" (and/or group of users) in the workflow (tokens and subworkflows typically)
2) a UI for the end users / contributors to actually make the selections.
For 1) you use tokens that will ultimately resolve to a list of user names who should take action. You might use names (e.g. bcripe) or aliases (e.g. The Legal Team) or other concepts that make sense to the end users who will be participating (e.g. capital expenditure review). Whatever you do the tokens will ultimately yield one or more user ids which become the step users.
For 2) you can use anything that will make those plumbing values available to the UCM workflow engine. Most common is using metadata fields. They're easy, can be displayed only during workflows (using rules and profiles), and fairly intuitive for most UCM users (if there are not too many!!!). However, you can just as easily write web services, BPEL tasks, or CIS integrations that take form or other triggered input from the user and pass those parameters back to the workflow engine. For more complex workflows this is often a good idea especially if you are dealing with people who are only casual users of UCM or who are interacting with content through another primary UI.
Either way, let us know what we can do to help. Workflows are a special passion to us here at Fishbowl and we've got supported software to prove it. http://bit.ly/95Rocu
Warmly,
Billy Cripe
Fishbowl Solutions