Workflows let you turn a multi-step review into one visual, repeatable process. On a drag-and-drop canvas, you set how documents move: route them by search criteria, assign them to groups, apply codes and other batch actions, and add gates where tasks must be complete or documents must be approved before they move on.
Once you add documents to a workflow, they advance on their own according to your rules. Hand-offs don't depend on someone remembering them. You can see how many documents are at each step without building tracking searches.
When a process works well, copy it to your next project instead of rebuilding it.
Requirements and permissions
Workflows are created and managed at the project level, and are visible only to Project Admins and users with the Workflows Admin project permission. Project Admins have this permission by default. You can grant it to other user groups in Project Settings > Permissions.
A Workflows Admin can view, create, and edit every workflow in the project. They can also use the Workflow search term. Users that have not been granted Workflow Admin permission cannot view Workflows.
Document reviewers do not need the Workflows Admin permission to review documents from an assignment group a Workflow creates. As documents meet the reviewed criteria, they move on in the workflow
Workflows are only available for Review projects, not ECA projects.
Anatomy of a Workflow
This section will give you a high level understanding of how Workflows are built and managed and the canvas you’ll be working on.
Access Workflows
Workflows appear in the Workflows column on the project homepage.
Each Workflow card shows:
- The Workflow’s name
- The Workflow’s status
- The number of documents in the Workflow
- The percentage of documents in the Workflow that have successfully reached a Workflow finish point
Workflow statuses
Each workflow shows its status and progress. The statuses are:
- Unpublished: It is still in a draft state and has never been published
- Active: It has been published; documents may be added and actively moving through the Workflow
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Paused: It was published and active at one point in time, but has since been manually paused by an Admin. While a workflow is paused, documents will not advance steps.
Note
Pausing does not have any affect on what is happening at a given step, just that documents won't advance to the next step. For example, pausing a workflow won't "freeze" an assignment group, documents can still be reviewed and batched out for review.
A Workflow’s status, version number, and last published date are listed in the Workflow header.
Workflow steps
Each Workflow is made up of a series of steps, including a starting point, where you will eventually add documents into the Workflow, and one or more finish points.
The types of steps, which we will illustrate and cover in more detail in our Workflow Steps Types article, are:
- Route documents
- Assign documents
- Modify documents
- Tasks gate
- Approval gate
Once a Workflow is active and documents are moving through it, each step and finish point shows counts of documents that are presently in, or have advanced through the step, per the step process and requirements.
Workflow lifecycle
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Create: Select the plus + button in the homepage’s Workflows column and name the workflow.
This opens a new Workflow in Edit mode. Your changes save automatically. To learn more about getting started, visit Create, Edit and Publish Workflows. -
Draft: Add, connect, and configure steps, starting from the panel on the right side of the canvas. At this stage, the workflow is not yet live. For details on individual step types and how to configure them, visit Workflow Step Types.
- Publish: When you select Publish, Everlaw creates the Workflows finish points and the assignment groups for any Assign steps. Your Workflow is active, and ready to go.
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Manage a published workflow: Once a Workflow is published, you can:
- Add and remove documents
- Track documents’ progress through the Workflow
- Pause and resume the workflow
- Make changes in Edit mode and publish a new version
- Reuse the Workflow in another project
Now what?
Now that you have a high level overview of Workflows, we recommend taking a look at the five step types you can include in a workflow and building your own.