How to add reviewers/approvers to a workflow after it has begun?

Question

For example, if I begin a workflow and find that I missed out a reviewer, I cannot "edit" workflow and add a new reviewer. I either have to start a new workflow for that reviewer or I have to cancel the current workflow and start a new one with all the reviewers. Is it possible to add another reviewer to a running workflow? If yes, how do I achieve this - can anyone give some pointers or helpful links? Is this something that can be on the roadmap as a future enhancement?

afaust · Accepted Answer

After a workflow instance has been initialized you cannot change the reviewers / approvers list set during the start of the workflow. You also cannot do any changes to it via the process definition, because the process definition is versioned, the workflow instance linked to a specific version and any change you perform will only affect new workflows, not those that are already running.

The ability to add reviewers / approvers is a custom business requirement that should be part of custom workflow development. The Alfresco out-of-the-box workflows are very simple examples of what the workflow system can do and - in my opinion - usually not meant to be used for production use (unless your use case really is as simple as these workflows).