Magnolia 5.7 reached extended end of life on May 31, 2022. Support for this branch is limited, see End-of-life policy. Please note that to cover the extra maintenance effort, this EEoL period is a paid extension in the life of the branch. Customers who opt for the extended maintenance will need a new license key to run future versions of Magnolia 5.7. If you have any questions or to subscribe to the extended maintenance, please get in touch with your local contact at Magnolia.

Magnolia ships with activation and deactivation (deletion) approval workflows by default. These are provided by the Workflow module. Disabling the workflow may be appropriate for a simple site workforce where there are no separate editor and publisher roles. When the approval workflow is disabled, content will be published to public instances immediately when activation is launched.

Removing the Workflow module disables all workflows, not only the content approval workflow. Don't remove the module if you have custom workflows used for some other purpose.

Not-yet-installed system

If you did not install the Magnolia instance yet, choose this option. Disabling workflow involves removing the Workflow module.

To disable workflow before installing Magnolia:

  1. Extract the installation bundle using the installer or unpack it manually.
  2. Before you start the system, remove the following JAR files from the /<CATALINA_HOME>/webapps/<contextPath>/WEB-INF/lib directory on all Magnolia instances:
    • magnolia-module-workflow
    • magnolia-module-workflow-jbpm
  3. Start Magnolia and complete the installation and Web update.

Already-installed system

If you already installed Magnolia and want to disable workflow afterwards, choose this option.

Each app that allows you to activate content has an activate action that typically triggers an activate command. Here is an example command from the Pages app:

Node nameValue

 modules


 pages


 commands


 website


 activate


 class

info.magnolia.commands.DelegateCommand

 commandName

workflow-activate

The activate command in the app delegates the work to an activate command in the workflow catalog. The second command then triggers the approval workflow. The commandName property value follows the pattern:

<catalog>-<command>

Change the commandName property so that it triggers a command that does not involve workflow. The Activation module provides two such commands:

  • default-activate just activates the content. No workflow, no versioning, no component variants.
  • versioned-activate activates and versions the content. No workflow, no component variants.

Here is an example:

Node nameValue

 modules


 pages


 commands


 website


 activate


 class

info.magnolia.commands.DelegateCommand

 commandName

 default-activate

Change the command for all apps where you don't want a workflow. Each app has its own activate command. However, only the Pages app triggers an approval workflow by default.

Deactivation works the same way. In the Pages app, the deactivate action triggers a command that delegates the work to the workflow-deactivate command. Change it to a non-workflow alternative.

default-activate command doesn´t work with personalization and variants, personalization has its own command personalizationActivation.