The Disposition Approval workflow offers two common options for managing document-retention policies. The simple method is to allow users to manually initiate the workflow process on documents they see in the SharePoint document libraries that they believe are qualified to be reviewed. The workflow then creates an unassigned task in a task list where users are monitoring the task items. This task queue represents documents that need to be reviewed and acted upon, culminating in the document being saved for an additional period of time or deleted. This process is easy to set up, but holds significant risk: Documents that should be deleted might not be located due to the manual nature in which they're found.
A better way to way to ensure documents are discovered at the end of their lifecycle is to use a combination of content types and information management policies. SharePoint lets users create information management policies that set the timeframe for a document to remain in the repository. These policies can be applied to specific content types, thus allowing organizations to apply different retention policies to specific types of documents. When the time period for retention on a specific policy is reached, the Disposition Approval workflow is automatically initiated by the policy, and the tasks are added to the queue to be handled by those people delegated to review expired documents.
You can see that the combination of technologies in this workflow present many opportunities for business process automation. SharePoint can determine the type of document and specific information management policies associated with that type of document, then can initiate specific workflows on these documents when policy limits are reached or exceeded. The ability for these operations to work together allows organizations to create very specific usability requirements on all their documents and to ensure that tasks are assigned as a result of the business process requirements.
Three-State. The Three-State workflow is again different than the previously mentioned processes in that it allows organizations to create intermediate steps in their workflow tasks. For example, when a user receives a task created from a workflow, the standard steps in that task equate to a status of either open or closed. When the task is created and assigned, the status is open. Upon task completion, the status is closed. This methodology works with many tasks and business processes, but most businesses have individual processes that contain more than simple two-step tasks. The Three-State workflow offers a little more flexibility for these situations. A common use for this workflow is with the Issues list, which is available as part of your standard SharePoint installation. The workflow essentially allows a process to create more than a single task per person depending on the status of the item that created the workflow.
Let's walk through how this workflow works on the standard Issues list. You can add a Three-State workflow to this list, and by default it looks at the Issue Status column for the available states. (A Three-State workflow requires a choice column with at least three choices.) The workflow will choose Active as the initial state, Resolved as the middle state, and Closed as the final state. When you create a new item in the Issues list, if this workflow is set to automatically initiate with a new item, the workflow creates a task and assigns it to the user who is set as the Assigned To user in the Issues list. This task contains a link to the Issue list Item where the assigned user can complete the task. Figure 2 shows an example of this workflow in action. It shows that Ryan Thomas has been assigned Issue number 2. You can also see in Figure 3 that an associated task has been added to the task list and assigned to Ryan and that there is a link from the task back to the issue.
When Ryan sees this task and navigates to the associated issue, he will work to fix the issue and set the status to Resolved, as Figure 4 shows. Now note that the associated task assigned to Ryan Thomas has been completed and a new task assigned to the Administrator (the original creator of the issue) is created requesting that she view the fix and ultimately close the issue. Figure 5 displays what the task list looks like at this point in the process. For the sake of this example, let’s assume there was a problem and the Administrator had to set the issue status back to Active. Figure 6 illustrates that the Administrator task of reviewing the fix was completed, and an additional task has been assigned to Ryan Thomas to continue working on the issue. We will assume Ryan fixes and resolves the issue correctly and the Administrator reviews and accepts the fix, thus closing the Issue. Figure 7 shows the succession of tasks and their metadata. This workflow can help keep a standard business process focused and reviewable.
Simple Yet Effective
Microsoft chose to build and include some workflow options out of the box. Many users believe these workflows are just samples to get you started and too simple or generic to be of value. However, if you look a little deeper at what each of these workflows can do, they represent a nice sampling of some extremely functional behavior. It's true that you can use external tools to build much more powerful and complicated workflows that are specific to an individual organization and business process. Generic workflows that can appeal to most users require keeping the functionality at a high level and consistent with problems most users face.
Many business process problems can be solved with the SharePoint workflows available out of the box. With some preparation and ability to see how the technical process can be applied to current manual business problems, most organizations can find ways to increase efficiency, reduce errors, and begin a series of processes requiring less printed paper and manual intervention. Other workflows can require more effort to understand and apply to a business process. In either case, the resources required to create and use the workflows are almost guaranteed to save money and create a more manageable and compliant organization.