We sometimes need to capture data during a workflow step in AEM and this can easily be achieved with out of the box components. Furthermore, we can choose if the captured data is stored on page properties or on the workflow’s work item.
Building the dialog
The first step is to build a dialog, the same way you build a Touch UI dialog. Here’s an example:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<jcr:root xmlns:sling="http://sling.apache.org/jcr/sling/1.0" xmlns:cq="http://www.day.com/jcr/cq/1.0" xmlns:jcr="http://www.jcp.org/jcr/1.0" xmlns:nt="http://www.jcp.org/jcr/nt/1.0"
jcr:primaryType="nt:unstructured"
jcr:title="Publish"
sling:resourceType="cq/gui/components/authoring/dialog">
<content
jcr:primaryType="nt:unstructured"
sling:resourceType="granite/ui/components/coral/foundation/fixedcolumns">
<items jcr:primaryType="nt:unstructured">
<column
jcr:primaryType="nt:unstructured"
sling:resourceType="granite/ui/components/coral/foundation/container">
<items jcr:primaryType="nt:unstructured">
<myText
jcr:primaryType="nt:unstructured"
sling:resourceType="granite/ui/components/coral/foundation/form/textfield"
fieldLabel="Text"
name="myText"
required="{Boolean}true"/>
</items>
</column>
</items>
</content>
</jcr:root>
Workflow step
The next step is to add the previously created dialog to the workflow step.
You will need to add a Dialog Participant Step or a Dynamic Participant Step to your workflow depending on your needs. On my example, I’m adding a Dialog Participant Step.
In the participant step set the dialog path to the path where the dialog was created, e.g. /apps/example/workflow-dialog-example/cq:dialog
Where is the data stored?
Depending on the name of the field, the data can be either stored on the page properties, if the workflow is applied to a page, or on the workflow itself.
If the field’s name parameter starts with ./jcr:content/ (e.g. ./jcr:content/myText) then it will be stored on the workflow payload (page properties node). If you want to achieve this, you will need to ensure that the workflow user has write permissions on the workflow payload path.
If the field name is the property name (e.g. myText) it will be stored on the workflow instance’s work item metadata node.
Conclusion
Depending on your requirements you can decide where you would like to store the collected information. When you store on the workflow instance you will likely have to create custom processors in order to use the information collected. Storing in the page properties can be very helpful as the data can then be shown to the author in the page properties by adding a custom field.
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