NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) needed to automate an internal document approval process where any given launch of the workflow could:

Have unique and a varying number of approvers.
Abort the approval process immediately upon a single approver rejecting, even if other approvers have approved or have yet to view the document.
Re-route rejected documents to the initiator of the approval process.
Upon all assigned approvers approving the document, route the document to completion, notifying stakeholders in the process.

Using Drupal and Nextide’s Maestro workflow module, JPL was able to prototype a base workflow template to automate their process. However, the missing element was the ability to implement a workflow that allows for on-the-fly selection of approvers, the number of approvers and managing the acceptance and rejection of the document.