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Workflow Business Overview

Summary

The implemented capability separates reusable workflow authoring from running approval instances. It records who initiated and decided work and preserves the version used by each instance.

Business Purpose

Standardize multi-stage business approvals across tenant-owned processes while retaining task and history evidence.

Actors

Workflow authors, approvers, delegates, process initiators, tenant administrators, product owners, support teams and owners of connected business modules.

Business Flow

Authors create and publish definitions. Business modules optionally start instances. Assigned users or roles retrieve pending tasks and decide or delegate them. Terminal outcomes are recorded within Workflow.

Responsibilities

Authors maintain valid draft steps before publication. Initiating modules supply a subject and routing context. Approvers act only on applicable pending tasks. Tenant and service owners govern access, integration enablement and operational support.

Business Rules

Definitions and instances are tenant-scoped. Published versions are immutable. Rejection is terminal; successful completion follows the final applicable stage.

Integrations

Workflow Service owns definitions, versions, instances and tasks. Connected modules can synchronously start and read instances when their integration is enabled; lifecycle domain events are persisted to an outbox and relayed as integration events.

Limitations

The product is an approval engine foundation rather than a full business-process suite: timers, escalations, reminders, cancellation, visual design and guaranteed callbacks are absent.

Requires Confirmation

Production enablement, approver-role naming, upstream access enforcement, terminal decision propagation, notification ownership, retention and operating procedures require confirmation.

Source References

  • microservices/src/workflow-service/Domain/Workflow/WorkflowDefinition.cs
  • microservices/src/workflow-service/Domain/Workflow/WorkflowInstance.cs
  • microservices/src/workflow-service/Application/Commands/WorkflowInstanceCommands.cs

See Also

Keywords

Workflow, approval, definition, version, task, delegation.

Revision Information

Draft source-backed business documentation reviewed on 2026-07-20; next quarterly review is 2026-10-20.