The January 2014 XDocs 4.0 release joined two kinds of control: a configurable workflow for moving content through a process, and extended metadata for describing and finding that content.
A configurable workflow system
Bluestream introduced a workflow system based on BPMN 2.0. The announcement described it as configurable for both simple and complex internal processes, with event subscriptions, email notifications and enhanced reporting on workflow tasks.
XDocs Workflow 4.0 integrated with the Reviewer module and complemented the Localization module. The wider XDocs system handled authoring, management and publishing of DITA and other content in source and target languages.
- Define the processConfigure the workflow around the organization’s content tasks.
- Connect the participantsUse event subscriptions and email notifications to support handoffs.
- Review the workConnect workflow with the Reviewer module and task reporting.
Extended Metadata: describe content in your own terms
XDocs Extended Metadata allowed teams to define properties and associate files with property values. The release also described support for thesauri, taxonomies and ontologies, with uses including terminology control and indexing.
These properties worked with XDocs system-wide Search and faceted browsing. The relationship was important: metadata could describe a content item, while the discovery tools helped a person locate items with the characteristics they needed.
Process control
Workflow describes what needs to happen to content and how tasks move through the team.
Content description
Metadata describes the content itself, helping a team organize, locate and distinguish files.
Editorial context · October 2026
Design the handoffs and the vocabulary together
A practical pilot for the ideas in this release would follow one topic through review and localization while checking how an author finds it at each stage. Which properties distinguish the correct item? Who owns those values? Which notification tells the next person that work is ready?
BPMN stands for Business Process Model and Notation; the OMG publishes the BPMN 2.0 specification. That standards reference explains the process-modeling foundation named in the announcement. It does not independently verify a particular XDocs implementation or configuration.