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Introduction

Configurable Workflows are an optional feature that may be enabled for use only within DSpace XMLUI.  

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 dspace/config/xmlui.xconf

The submission aspect has been split up into muliple aspects: one submission aspect for the submission process, one workflow aspect containing the code for the original workflow and one xmlworkflow aspect containing the code for the new XML configurable workflow framework. In order to enable one of the two aspects, either the workflow or xmlworkflow aspect should be enabled in the [dspace]/config/xmlui.xconf configuration file. This means that the xmlui.xconf configuration for the original workflow is the following:

<aspect name="Submission and Workflow" path="resource://aspects/Submission/" />
<aspect name="Original Workflow" path="resource://aspects/Workflow/" />

And the xmlui.xconf configuration for the new XML configurable workflow is the following:

<aspect name="Submission and Workflow" path="resource://aspects/Submission/" />
<aspect name="XMLWorkflow" path="resource://aspects/XMLWorkflow/" />

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Besides that, a workflow configuration file has been created that specifies the workflow that will be used in the back-end of the DSpace code. It is important that the option selected in this configuration file matches the aspect that was enabled. The workflow configuration file is available in [dspace]/config/modules/workflow.cfg. This configuration file has been added because it is important that a CLI import process uses the correct workflow and this should not depend on the UI configuration. The workflow.cfg configration file contains the following property:

# Original Workflow
#workflow.framework: originalworkflow
#XML configurable workflow
workflow.framework: xmlworkflow

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To execute the script, run the following CLI command:

[dspace]/bin/dspace dsrun org.dspace.xmlworkflow.migration.RestartWorkflow -e admin@myrespository.org

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• -e: specifies the username of an adminstrator administrator user
• -n: if sending submissions through the workflow, send notification emails
• -p: the provenance description to be added to the item
• -h: help

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The workflow configuration file is available in [dspace]/config/modules/workflow.cfg. This configuration file has been added because it is important that a CLI import process uses the correct workflow and this should not depend on the UI configuration. The workflow.cfg configration file contains the following property:

# Original Workflow
#workflow.framework: originalworkflow
#XML configurable workflow
workflow.framework: xmlworkflow

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The workflow main configuration can be found in the workflow.xml file, located in [dspace]/config/workflow.xml. An example of this workflow configuration file can be found bellow.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<wf-config>
    <workflow-map>
        <!-- collection to workflow mapping -->
        <name-map collection="default" workflow="{workflow.id}"/>
        <name-map collection="123456789/0" workflow="{workflow.id2}"/>
    </workflow-map>

    <workflow start="{start.step.id}" id="{workflow.id}">
        <roles>
         <!-- Roles used in the workflow -->
        </roles>

            <!-- Steps come here-->
            <step id="ExampleStep1" nextStep="ExampleStep2" userSelectionMethod="{UserSelectionActionId}">
            <!-- Step1 config-->
            </step>
        <step id="ExampleStep2" userSelectionMethod="{UserSelectionActionId}">

        </step>
    </workflow>
    <workflow start="{start.step.id2}" id="{workflow.id}">
     <!-- Another workflow configuration-->
    </workflow>
</wf-config>

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• id: a unique identifier (in one workflow process) for the role
• description: optional attribute to describe the role
• scope: optional attrbiute that is used to find our group and must have one of the following values:
  • collection: The collection value specifies that the group will be configured at the level of the collection. This type of groups is the same as the type that existed in the original workflow system.In case no value is specified for the scope attribute, the workflow framework assumes the role is a collection role.
  • repository: The repository scope uses groups that are defined at repository level in DSpace. The name attribute should exactly match the name of a group in DSpace.
  • item: The item scope assumes that a different action in the workflow will assign a number of EPersons or Groups to a specific workflow-item in order to perform a step. These assignees can be different for each workflow item.
• name: The name specified in the name attribute of a role will be used to lookup the in DSpace. The lookup will depend on the scope specified in the "scope" attribute:
  • collection: The workflow framework will look for a group containing the name specified in the name attribute and the ID of the collection for which this role is used.
  • repository: The workflow framework will look for a group with the same name as the name specified in the name attribute
  • item: in case the item scope is selected, the name of the role attribute is not required
• internal: optional attribute which isn't really used at the moment, false by default

<roles>
    <role id="{unique.role.id} description="{role.description}" scope="{role.scope}" name="{role.name}" internal="true/false"/>
</roles>

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• id: The id attribute specifies a unique identifier for the step, this id will be used when configuring other steps in order to point to this step. This identifier can also be used when configuring the start step of the workflow item.
• nextStep: This attribute specifies the step that will follow once this step has been completed under normal circumstances. If this attribute is not set, the workflow framework will assume that this step is an endpoint of the workflow process and will archive the item in DSpace once the step has been completed.
• userSelectionMethod: This attribute defines the UserSelectionAction that will be used to determine how to attache users to this step for a workflow-item. The value of this attribute must refer to the identifier of an action bean in the workflow-actions.xml. Examples of the user attachment to a step are the currently used system of a task pool or as an alternative directly assigning a user to a task.
• role: optional attribute that must point to the id attribute of a role element specified for the workflow. This role will be used to define the epersons and groups used by the userSelectionMethod.
• RequiredUsers

<step id="{step.id}" nextStep="{next.step.id}" userSelectionMethod="{user.selection.bean.id}" role="{role.id}" >
<!-- optional alternate outcomes, depending on the outcome of the actions you can alter the next step here -->
<alternativeOutcome>
     <step status="{integer}">{alternate.step.id}</step>
</alternativeOutcome>
<action id="{action.bean.id}"/>
<action id="{action.bean.id.1}"/>
</step>

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This file contains the beans for the actions and user selection methods referred to in the workflow.xml. In order for the workflow framework to work properly, each of the required actions must be part of this configuration.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans
    xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:util="http://www.springframework.org/schema/util"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.0.xsd
                           http://www.springframework.org/schema/util http://www.springframework.org/schema/util/spring-util-2.0.xsd">

    <!-- At the top are our bean class identifiers --->
    <bean id="{action.api.id}" class="{class.path}" scope="prototype"/>
    <bean id="{action.api.id.2}" class="{class.path}" scope="prototype"/>

 <!-- Below the class identifiers come the declarations for out actions/userSelectionMethods -->

 <!-- Use class workflowActionConfig for an action -->
 <bean id="{action.id}" class="oorg.dspace.xmlworkflow.state.actions.WorkflowActionConfig" scope="prototype">
     <constructor-arg type="java.lang.String" value="{action.id}"/>

     <property name="processingAction" ref="{action.api.id}"/>
     <property name="requiresUI" value="{true/false}"/>
 </bean>

 <!-- Use class UserSelectionActionConfig for a user selection method -->
 <!--User selection actions-->
 <bean id="{action.api.id.2}" class="org.dspace.xmlworkflow.state.actions.UserSelectionActionConfig" scope="prototype">
     <constructor-arg type="java.lang.String" value="{action.api.id.2}"/>

     <property name="processingAction" ref="{user.selection.bean.id}"/>
     <property name="requiresUI" value="{true/false}"/>
 </bean>
</beans>

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Each user selection action that is used in the workflow config refers to a bean definition in this workflow-actions.xml configuration. In order to create a new user selection action bean, the following XML code is used:

<bean id="{action.api.id.2}" class="org.dspace.xmlworkflow.state.actions.UserSelectionActionConfig" scope="prototype">
     <constructor-arg type="java.lang.String" value="{action.api.id.2}"/>

     <property name="processingAction" ref="{user.selection.bean.id}"/>
     <property name="requiresUI" value="{true/false}"/>
 </bean>

This bean defines a new UserSelectionActionConfig and the following child tags:

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The configuration file for the workflow user interface actions is located in the [dspace]/config/spring/xmlui/ and is named "workflow-actions-xmlui.xml". BEach bean defined here has an id which is the action identifier and the class is a classpath which links to the xmlui class responsible for generating the User Interface side of the workflow action. Each of the class defined here must extend the org.dspace.app.xmlui.aspect.submission.workflow.AbstractXMLUIAction class, this class contains some basic settings for an action and has a method called addWorkflowItemInformation() which will render the given item with a show full link so you don't have to write the same code in each of your actions if you want to display the item. The id attribute used for the beans in the configuration must correspond to the id used in the workflow configuration. In case an action requires a User Interface class, the workflow framework will look for a UI class in this configuration file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans
    xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:util="http://www.springframework.org/schema/util"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.0.xsd
                           http://www.springframework.org/schema/util http://www.springframework.org/schema/util/spring-util-2.0.xsd">

    <bean id="{action.id}" class="{classpath}" scope="prototype"/>
    <bean id="{action.id.2}" class="{classpath}" scope="prototype"/>
</beans>

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