We’re experiencing an issue with our document approval workflow in MC 2023.1. When an approver rejects a document during the review stage, the workflow is supposed to route it back to the drafter with rejection comments. However, what’s happening is the document loops back to the drafter, but then immediately re-enters the approval queue without giving the drafter a chance to make revisions.
I’ve checked our transition rule configuration and the rejection outcome mapping seems correct in the workflow template, but clearly something isn’t working as expected. The drafter receives the rejection notification but has no opportunity to actually edit the document before it goes back to approvers. This is causing confusion and multiple rejection cycles for the same issues.
Has anyone dealt with workflow template updates for rejection handling? What am I missing in the configuration?
That was exactly it! I found three issues after digging deeper:
1. Transition Rule Configuration: The ‘Reject’ action outcome was routing to ‘Draft Revision’ state correctly, but I discovered a secondary automatic transition rule that was firing immediately. In the workflow template, under Transition Rules, there was a rule set to ‘On Entry to Draft Revision State’ → ‘If document owner is assigned’ → ‘Auto-advance to Review’. This was leftover from an earlier configuration. I disabled this automatic rule.
2. Rejection Outcome Mapping: The rejection action itself needed better configuration. In the workflow designer, I edited the ‘Reject’ action and ensured the outcome explicitly mapped to ‘Draft Revision’ with the ‘Require User Resubmission’ flag enabled. Previously this flag wasn’t set, which allowed the system to interpret the state as a pass-through.
3. Workflow Template Update - State Behavior: As mc_consultant_pro mentioned, the ‘Draft Revision’ state properties had ‘Require User Action to Exit State’ unchecked. I enabled this, and also added a mandatory ‘Revision Notes’ field that drafters must complete before resubmitting. This ensures they actively engage with the rejection rather than just clicking through.
After publishing the updated workflow template and testing with a sample document, the rejection now properly holds in Draft Revision state. The drafter gets the rejection notification, can make changes, must enter revision notes, and then explicitly clicks ‘Resubmit for Approval’. No more automatic looping.
One additional tip: I also updated our workflow documentation to clarify that when configuring rejection paths, you need to verify three layers - the action outcome mapping, any automatic transition rules, and the destination state behavior settings. Missing any one of these can cause routing problems.
Thanks everyone for the guidance on where to look!
Thanks both. I checked and we do have a ‘Draft Revision’ state, but I think the issue is that the transition rule from ‘Rejected’ to ‘Draft Revision’ has some kind of automatic progression enabled. Where in MC 2023.1 would I find the setting that controls whether a state requires manual user action versus auto-advancing? I’m looking in the workflow template editor but not seeing an obvious toggle.
I’ve seen this exact behavior before. Usually it’s because the transition rule after rejection is set to auto-advance instead of requiring a manual action. Check your workflow template - there should be a ‘Draft Revision’ state between rejection and resubmission. The drafter needs to explicitly click ‘Submit for Review’ again after making changes.
Adding to what doc_control_admin said - your rejection outcome mapping likely has the wrong state assignment. In the workflow designer, when you configure the ‘Reject’ action, make sure the outcome points to a state that requires user intervention, not one that has automatic transitions enabled. We had to add an intermediate ‘Revision Required’ state with no auto-routing to fix this exact problem in our implementation.
In the workflow template editor, select the ‘Draft Revision’ state node. In the properties panel on the right, there’s a section called ‘State Behavior’ - look for a checkbox that says ‘Require User Action to Exit State’ or similar wording depending on your exact version. That needs to be checked. Also verify that no transition rules have ‘Automatic Execution’ enabled when entering that state. Sometimes there are multiple rules and one might have auto-execution turned on by mistake.