Manually restarting a workflow

Workflows can be manually restarted on:

• An active workflow from the first activity to the current one.
• A completed workflow that has been marked as “not approved” or “approval postponed” from the first activity to the one that was marked as not approved or postponed.

Workflows can be manually restarted by:

• Workflow initiator
• Senior library administrator or higher
• Cabinet administrator if they have ownership of the cabinet where all of the main workflow documents reside.

If the workflow is restarted, the current workflow is cancelled (if not already completed) and displays the Restarted status. A new, identical workflow is started and the previous workflow details can be viewed in the Restarted Workflows Status Report by clicking the Restarted link.

If documents are added to a workflow that has been marked as “approval postponed” upon restarting the workflow and a “main document” is added, an administrator can define on the workflow template if all the activities should restart from Activity #1. This allows all of the main documents including the new main document to go through the entire workflow process once again. If the "Reset all activities when adding documents to a postponed workflow" option is not enabled on the template then the workflow is restarted from the activity from which the approval was postponed. See creating workflow templates for more information.

If a workflow approval is postponed and later restarted, then the restarted workflow gets canceled, the resulting status of the canceled workflow is “approval postponed”.

Workflows are restarted in the workflow status report.

NOTE: Workflows may be restarted automatically from an activity marked as “approval postponed” if enabled in a workflow template. If a workflow has the option to postpone approval enabled, then the workflow may be automatically restarted with one of the following options:

• Return to the workflow initiator. The initiator would need to manually restart using the process defined here or re-initiate the workflow.
• Automatically return to a previous activity in the workflow template.
• The user postponing the activity can be given an option of selecting from a list of activities to restart from which includes the returning to the initiator or a previous workflow activities.

This feature is useful when a later workflow activity discovers missing information or documents and needs to return to a previous activity. Participants are notified if a workflow is restarted and includes the comments of the user who postponed the workflow. If the activity is 1 of X, only the participant who completed the previous task is notified. See your library administrator for details.

To manually restart a workflow

1. In the workflow status report, select the activity to be restarted. It can be an active or a completed workflow that was marked as not approved or approval postponed.
2. Click Restart Workflow.
3. Click OK at the alert message. A new workflow is started with notifications being sent to the participants.
4. The old workflow instance status changes to “Restarted” and a new workflow instance is created. The previous workflow details can be viewed by clicking the Restarted link. The Restarted workflows status report show any restarted workflows. From here you can view the documents (click Show documents) and workflow template details (click View details).

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Link to Restarted workflows status report

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Restarted Workflows Status Report