Developing CQ Custom Workflow Steps using Maven

You can create an Adobe CQ custom workflow step by using Maven. A custom workflow step lets you customize a CQ workflow to meet your business requirements. An Adobe CQ workflow consists of steps that are either participant steps or process steps.

Creating custom AEM workflow steps that send email messages
You can develop a custom Adobe Experience Manager workflow step that sends email messages to users within a workflow. A custom workflow step is implemented as an OSGi bundle that you can build using Maven and the AEM Workflow APIs that belong to the com.adobe.granite.workflow.exec package. For information, see Package com.adobe.granite.workflow.exec.

A custom AEM workflow step
Once you create and deploy the custom step, you can use it to send email messages to users within an AEM workflow. To send email messages, a com.day.cq.mailer.MessageGateway instance is used. For information, see Interface MessageGateway.

To read this development article, click http://helpx.adobe.com/experience-manager/using/creating-custom-aem-workflow-steps.html.
Participant steps require manual intervention by a person to advance the workflow. Process steps are actions performed by Adobe CQ if certain configured conditions are satisfied. You can create either a participant or process custom workflow step using Maven. You can use the Adobe CQ Java API to create a custom step.

To read this entire article, click this link:
https://helpx.adobe.com/experience-manager/using/developing-cq-custom-workflow-steps.html