Workflow activity
A workflow activity is a logically isolated unit that implements a particular operational step of a workflow. The logic incorporated in an activity takes effect both at design time, when you add the activity to a workflow definition, and at runtime, when a workflow instance is executed. When all the activities in a given flow path are finished running, the workflow instance is completed.
Workflow Designer
The Workflow Designer is a graphical tool provided by Active Roles for constructing workflows. The tool represents the workflow definition as a process diagram, with icons denoting workflow activities and directional arrows denoting transitions between activities. Users drag activities from the activities panel onto the process diagram and configure them using the pages provided by the designer interface. Separate pages are provided for configuring workflow start conditions.
Workflow engine
Active Roles leverages Microsoft’s Windows Workflow Foundation runtime engine for creating and maintaining workflow instances. The engine can support multiple workflow instances running concurrently. When a workflow is started, the engine monitors the state of the workflow instance, coordinates the routing of activities in the workflow instance, determines which activities are eligible to run, and runs activities. The workflow engine is hosted in-process with the Administration Service, which enables workflows to communicate with Active Roles at run time.
E-mail Notifications
Users are notified via e-mail about specific situations that manifest within a workflow. A notification message is generated and sent to the designated recipients to inform them that a certain event has occurred, such as a new approval task has been submitted to the approvers or the operation has been completed. A notification configuration involves such elements as the event to notify of, the list of the notification recipients, and the notification message template.