Collaboration Workflows allow teams to define, automate, and track product-related processes. They structure how product data moves between roles (e.g., contributor, approver) and stages (e.g., copy writing, translation or localization, review, approval), ensuring quality and consistency across the catalog. Learn more about What are Collaboration Workflows?.

Depending on the role’s permissions and the user’s editing permissions defined at the user group level, different roles can benefit the Collaboration Workflows feature:

• PIM Admin / Owner: Can create, configure, and assign workflows. Learn more about how to Set up your Collaboration Workflows.
• Team Leads / Managers: Can monitor tasks, track progress, and ensure assigned work is completed. 
• All assigned business users: Can view and act on tasks assigned to them within the workflow. Learn more about how to Manage your Collaboration Workflows pending tasks.

Please take a look at the Manage the interface and actions accesses > Rights on settings > Permissions on Workflows article.

No. Collaboration Workflows are designed to guide business users through structured content editing and review directly on the live product record before activation on any channel. They help ensure data accuracy, consistency, and compliance, enhance collaboration, and increase productivity — but they do not create or manage draft versions or proposals. To maintain data integrity, Contributors must have “Own” permissions (not only “Edit”) on the product category in order to enter or save values during an enrichment or review task.

If you need to lock the products from being activated, we recommend adding a specific action in the final review step. You can assign the reviewer a dedicated task such as:

• setting the product's categorization,
• enabling its status attribute,
• or assigning a specific mandatory attribute like "Go Live" or “Go to Market.”

Automated rules can also handle those three methods if you set up Step Automation.

You can also use the REST API to retrieve the workflow status from the product or product model endpoint. This allows you to check whether a product is currently in a workflow or has completed its last review step, and determine whether it can be synchronized with your webshop or other channels.

These two concepts are related but serve different purposes in workflow, specifically in how products enter.

• Workflow Entry Conditions define when a product enters the workflow, based on the workflow type (One-time, or Continuous), whether the product has already participated in the workflow, and whether a triggering event has occurred (for Continuous workflows only).

• Product Selection Conditions determine whether a product is eligible for a workflow based on its characteristics. This product filtering is based on configurable criteria such as its status, category or family, the attribute’s value or channel and locale context, the entity type (simple product vs product model vs variant), etc. If the product does not match these criteria, it will not generate product tasks, even if the workflow is enabled and entry rules are satisfied. So, Product Selection controls which products are considered as valid candidates for workflow tasks.

Learn more about the Workflow types in the What are Collaboration Workflows? article, and check out how to set up Workflow Entry & Product Selection in the Set up your Collaboration Workflows article.

Yes. Workflows can be filtered based on product families, product categories, brands, product ranges, suppliers, or numerous other attributes. You can define the subset of products to include in a workflow in the Product Selection tab of the Workflows settings, and tasks will only trigger for products meeting these conditions. 

Learn more about the Product Selection in the Set up your Collaboration Workflows article.

You can design a seasonal workflow with a clear target deadline by using a date-type attribute such as “Release date”, “Go-Live date”, or “Season Launch date” in the Product Selection criteria. While Collaboration Workflows don’t enforce deadlines automatically, using a date attribute allows you to target the right products and align workflow timing with your seasonal milestones.

Learn more about the Product Selection in the Set up your Collaboration Workflows article.

Product tasks stay until completed. Suppose a product's value changes (e.g., Category, Status, or Family) and it no longer matches the defined Product Selection criteria, it will remain in the workflow until it is completed (reaches the final step). The criteria are primarily used to determine which products initially enter the workflow, not to eject them mid-process.

Suppose there are changes to the product Selection criteria while the workflow is live. In that case, it will only apply to products newly entering the workflow when they are created or updated and meet all the conditions of the settings.

Learn more about the Product Selection in the Set up your Collaboration Workflows article.

In a Continuous Workflow, re-entry does not apply to products that are already in the workflow, as pending tasks. When a re-entry event happens on a product that is already in the workflow, it is ignored. Since the system does not maintain a queue or memory of events, this product will not re-enter the workflow later, unless it completes the full worfklow and the update triggering the re-entry happens afterwards.

Learn more about the Workflow Entry in the Set up your Collaboration Workflows article.

Users are notified weekly via email to remind them of their assigned pending tasks, or daily for their rejected, awaiting tasks, so that they can take action as soon as possible. The notifications are by default activated and can be managed in the user’s notification panel of the System section.

This is possible to customize email notifications or trigger real-time alerts in any communication tool using the Event platform or API Endpoints, through iPaaS solutions, for example.

Learn more about the system's notifications in the Set up your Collaboration Workflows article.

Adjustments like changing the workflow type, renaming steps, adding description (instructions), changing the step’s assignment, or adding step automation are allowed, and will affect the tasks management immediately.

You can also edit the product selection criteria even if the workflow is enabled. Products currently in the workflow will not be impacted to preserve the data integrity of any product tasks already in progress. The new product selection will only be applied to the new products entering the workflow.

However, adding/removing/reordering steps in the workflow sequence is not possible without protecting the product tasks already in flow. To do so, you may duplicate your workflow to deactivate it first, then edit the sequence, enable it again, and clean the original process.

To design a workflow step that focuses on required attributes, in the Step Settings, you can select the attribute group(s) you want to complete and select the “required attribute” option. This ensures that users only see and work on fields that are mandatory for the product, rather than the full attribute set from the family.

Learn more about the Step's settings in the Set up your Collaboration Workflows article.

To optimize system performance, certain workflow events (like task creation for hundreds of products) are processed asynchronously. This can explain why users may notice a short delay before a task appears in their dashboard.

If a product receives an update that matches the trigger while still progressing through the workflow, the re-entry is ignored until the current task is done and a new relevant update occurs. The system does not maintain a queue or memory of updates for products still active in the sequence

This may occur due to delays in the background processing. Waiting a few minutes usually resolves this. If discrepancies persist, you can contact our support team.

Workflows do not automatically reassign tasks. Managers, with the support of their PIM Admin, must manually reassign tasks when necessary.

There are practical performance considerations as extensive workflows with thousands of tasks could slow the system. Best practice is to segment large catalogs into logical workflows.

Here are the limitations to keep in mind:

• You can create 100 workflows (enabled and disabled together).
• You can create 20 steps per workflow.
• You can only assign a step to a single User Group, with a total of 5 channels, 10 locales per channel and 10 attribute groups.
• You can include up to 50 attribute updates as triggers for a Continuous Workflow (all channels and locale specifications counting).
• You can include up to 25 Product Selection criteria (with and, or, and/or grouped conditions counting all together).
• You can include up to 50,000 concurrent products in a worfklow even though your Product Selection Counter may show more. Keep in mind that the counter only reflects the selection at enabling (it is not dynamic), and without any filter, your whole catalog will be eligible to enter the workflow. If more than 50,000 products match, they may not enter the workflow right away. Products will enter or be batched in after the currently active ones have completed their tasks and free some space (at product creation or update only, as the system does not handle queues), ensuring system stability and prioritizing recent updates.

Changing PIM settings after a workflow is activated can cause inconsistencies. This may result in some tasks being skipped or not visible to assigned users. Examples include:

• Changing a product’s family or family variant (for product models).
• Changing an assigned user’s user group.
• Changing an assigned attribute’s attribute group.
• Removing a user from an assigned group.
• Removing an attribute from an assigned attribute group.

These changes do not automatically update the workflow assignments, so previously assigned tasks may flow through the step sequence but remain invisible or unassigned. You should rely on your PIM Owner to fix the possible issues so that new tasks can flow properly.

Each product task available in your dashboard is considered as pending (Waiting for action) or in progress. Some tasks with the attribute progress bar showing 100% completion may be all filled in, but still need your review and completion as they are assigned to your role.

If the PIM Owner has specified an allotted time to the workflow step you’re assigned to, a priority tag will help you even better monitor your tasks.

Learn more about how to Manage your Collaboration Workflows pending tasks.

There are various possible reasons:

• The product does not meet the Product Selection criteria, so it is not a candidate for the worfklow.
• Your user (and its user group) has no permission on the category the product is categorized in, aka lacks the appropriate Catalog Access Rights (”View”, “Edit” or “Own” permissions) on the specific Product Category the products belong to. If a product is in multiple categories, the most permissive right is applied to the product. I that case, your PIM Admin should verify the user group's category permissions.
• The product has no family, or the family has been changed and no longer meets the assignment, or there is an issue with the settings of the Family variants in case of a Product Model.
• Your user (the assignee) is no longer part of the assigned user group, or the assigned user group you’re part of has been deleted.
• The assigned attribute is no longer part of the assigned attribute group, or the assigned attribute group has been deleted.
• The product was automatically skipped from your assigned workflow step because conditions from the settings were not met (mostly linked to the family or family variant of the product, assigned attributes, or your user group’s permission on the assigned attribute group, locale and/or channel).
• Another co-assigned user completed the task.

When you complete a task with the "Done & Next" button, the system is designed to guide you through all assigned tasks for that specific product entity (Product Model, Sub-Model, and all associated Variants) before moving to the next product on your Task List. However, completing a task at any level will individually push that specific task to the next step; it does not wait for all other tasks on different levels of the same Product Model to be completed. You are guided to complete all tasks, but the workflow progression is task-specific.

Yes. Managers or Team leads can filter and monitor tasks by user or workflow stage, thanks to the “Dashboard” section, which is only accessible if you’ve got the right user role’s permission. This helps quickly identify bottlenecks and ensure deadlines are met.

Learn more about the Dashboard overview in the What are Collaboration Workflows? article.

The rejected task is sent back to the selected previous step and marked with an Action Required tag. The specific attributes needing revision are flagged with an alert icon and the rejection comment. Note that only the most recent comment is visible in the workflow panel. All previous attribute changes are saved to the product record, which can be viewed in the History tab.

If no attributes are assigned in a workflow step:

• The Task remains relevant, meaning it is created and assigned to the user.
• The direction to the Attribute section on the product page may indicate that “there is no attribute for your search”, meaning there are no attributes assigned in this workflow step.
• This indicates that the user is expected to perform other actions, typically specified in the step description, such as completing product categorization, assigning a family, adding assets, or editing product associations.

Even if all attributes are already completed:

• The task remains relevant and is expected to be reviewed and completed (approved)..
• There is no automatic completion, so users must verify, refine or complete the task.

When tasks involve a Product Model without variants, the attribute completion progress cannot be calculated because it only applies once variants (SKUs) are created and linked to the product model.

• Users should focus on the task instructions (descriptionion in the step) rather than progress bars.
• Exception to be noted: in case of a Mass action to add product models to a workflow from the Product Grid, the task will not be created as mass editing ignores Product Models without any variants.

In a One-time workflow, a product can only enter and complete the workflow once. If the product has already completed this workflow in the past, it will not re-enter or recreate tasks again, even if updated later. This behavior is intentional because One-time workflows are typically used for initial enrichment or onboarding workflows (e.g. first-time setup, data import validation, initial classification).

In a Continuous workflow, a product will only re-enter the workflow once it has fully completed the previous run. So if the product:

• Is still in progress (a pending task exists), so it will not re-trigger the workflow.
• Has already completed the workflow; it will only re-enter after a product update trigger occurs.

A workflow only generates tasks if the product matches the Product Selection filter set in the workflow configuration. If the product does not meet the selection conditions, no task is created, regardless of workflow activation, step configuration, or updates.

Typical mismatch examples:

If the workflow itself is not enabled, no product can enter it.

Even if:

• The product matches the selection filters
• The user assignments are valid
• The configuration is complete

The task will not exist until the workflow is explicitly enabled.

Yes — from My Workflows → Pending Tasks, you can select multiple product tasks (or even all available tasks) and apply an action such as:

• Mark as completed, and move them to the next step
• Approve, and move them to the next step

This helps speed up repetitive validation activities across multiple products.

However, this is only possible if all task attributes are filled; otherwise, they will be skipped from the mass action and remain in your task list, pending.

Note that, in the case of a mass action to add products to a workflow, the workflow’s product selection is bypassed.

Learn more about how to Manage your Collaboration Workflows pending tasks.

You can try the Mass Action from the Product Grid, select multiple products and use the “Add to workflow” bulk action from the Product Grid. This is the fastest way to target a filtered subset of products for immediate enrichment or validation within an existing workflow. For one-time workflows, this is only possible if the products have not yet been completed through that specific workflow.

Learn more about how to mass add products to a workflow from the product grid in the Set up your Collaboration Workflows article.

The Workflows feature is designed to ensure an efficient, seamless collaboration loop and does not allow the creation and management of Drafts or Proposals. To maintain data integrity and align the user experience, a Contributor must have “Own” permissions (not just “Edit) on the product category to directly input or save product values in the product record during an enrichment or review task.

If you need to lock the products from being activated, we recommend adding a specific action in the final review step. You can assign the reviewer a dedicated task such as:

• setting the product's categorization,
• enabling its status attribute,
• or assigning a specific mandatory attribute like "Go Live" or “Go to Market.”

Automated rules can also handle those three methods if you set up Step Automation.

You can also use the REST API to retrieve the workflow status from the product or product model endpoint. This allows you to check whether a product is currently in a workflow or has completed its last review step, and determine whether it can be synchronized with your webshop or other channels.

Yes, you can design Chained Workflows to link multiple Collaboration Workflows so that when the first one is completed, the next one automatically begins. This is ideal for organizations where teams (e.g., Copywriters -> Translators in different languages -> Legal Reviewers) work on the same product data both sequentially and simultaneously.

Learn more about Chained Worfklow in the What are Collaboration Workflows? article.

Collaboration Workflows are natively extensible. You can use the REST API to retrieve a product's current workflow status (workflow_statusendpoint) to check if it's completed or active, which is critical for synchronizing exports. The Event Platform allows you to trigger instant, custom notifications (via Email, Slack, Teams) or other actions in external task management, DAM, or ERP systems whenever a task is created, completed, approved, or rejected. This provides true real-time synchronization.

Learn more about customized notification and 3rd party apps integration in the What are Collaboration Workflows? article, and discover how to do so in our technical documentation that details our Workflow REST API Endpoints and the Workflows’ events available on the Event Platform.

Yes. Collaboration Workflows enable you to orchestrate task assignment to business users and apply a certain level of workflow automation. Still, each serves a different purpose and can, of course, be combined.

• Task assignment is used when human review, contribution, enrichment, or approval is required. Tasks are always assigned to a user or user group defined in the workflow step configuration. Most of the time, they reflect high value or high expertise requirements.
• Step Automation can be applied when no human action is needed, or to support teams with repetitive or low-value actions that can be easily automated thanks to Workflow-based rules.

Step Automation can apply to any workflow, even if already enabled, but cannot be triggered other than via a workflow event (step start-up or step completion or approval).

Learn more about Step Automation in the Set up your Collaboration Workflows article.

You can rely on Akeneo’s documentation, you can ask the AI assistant in our Help Center, you can take a guided tour of the feature to learn how to use the feature step-by-step, or join our training sessions to explore Collaboration Workflows, understand use cases, see how it works, and practice in a real test environment.

Learn more about use case with the What are Collaboration Workflows?article. Discover how to Set up your Collaboration Workflows, and How to manage assigned pending tasks, once a workflow is enabled.