How to Run the workflow programmatically and see the draft items in Workbox

Question

I want to replicate the scenario workflow scenario programmatically. I have a simple workflow with 2 states Draft and Published (or Approved). Users with the right permission can edit, save and even submit the changes Or other users can review and submit from their workbox. This works fine when the user edits the changes in the content editor.

But I have a code to update some of the items programmatically and I am using switch user to run that piece of code under some specific user context. Now the problem is, those updates are not going through workflows. I am able to update the workflow details (workflow id, state id) to the item's corresponding field ("__Workflow", "__Workflow state") but the problem is those items don't appear in Workbox. The goal is to update the items programmatically (including creating a new version), but someone has to review and submit to get the updated items published.

Please let me know if anyone got input.

Thanks, Sharath

Answer 1

You can use Sitecore Workflow API to add the newly created item/version into workflow, the new version will go into the initial state of your workflow, which usually would be the "Draft" state.

ID WorkflowID = ID.Parse("ID of your workflow Item");
newItemVersion.Editing.BeginEdit();
newItemVersion.Fields[Sitecore.FieldIDs.Workflow].Value = WorkflowID;
IWorkflow wf = master.WorkflowProvider.GetWorkflow(WorkflowID);
wf.Start(newItemVersion);
newItemVersion.Editing.EndEdit();

Hope this helps

Answer 2

Sitecore PowerShell Extensions comes with a few commands to help manipulate workflow data.

Invoke-Workflow is likely the command you would use in your scenario.

Example: The following transitions the item through the workflow by triggering the command programmatically.

Invoke-Workflow -Path master:/content/home -CommandName "Submit" -Comments "Automated"

Other commands of interest include New-ItemWorkflowEvent and Get-ItemWorkflowEvent.