Workflow: Technology Backgrounder

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You generally use the term workflow to describe applications that are modeled as business processes. Typical workflow applications include forms routing/approval, document review/publishing, and issue tracking. While you can implement such applications in nearly any programming language or development environment, you can simplify the task with the use of a workflow engine and specialized workflow modeling tools.

• Modeling tools make it possible for the overall design, or flow, of a business process to be specified in a simple, high-level representation called a process definition. You can modify or extend the process definition without rewriting all of the low-level application code.
• The workflow engine executes and manages individual instances of a process definition, also known as process instances.

The conceptual model for a workflow process includes states and events. A state is a discrete value of the state property of an item. For example, the state of an issue defines where that issue is in the workflow process, such as Resolved or Closed. An event defines the operations that can be performed on an item. One special type of event is a transition, which moves the item from one state to another.

The core services provided by the Workflow Designer tools that you can use to create applications are Workflow and Security.

See Also

Which Technologies Should You Use? | Workflow | Security | Where Should You Store Data? | Building Add-ins, Wizards, and Templates