Workflows
ASP.NET Zero includes a built-in workflow and approval builder. Tenant administrators design request types such as leave requests, purchase approvals or document reviews in a visual designer. Employees then start requests from a catalog, and approvers decide on them from their inbox.
The same feature is available in the MVC, Angular and React UIs. The designer is a shared component, so the screens and labels described in these documents are the same in all three.
What you can build
A workflow combines a form with a flow.
- The form is what the requester fills in: text, numbers, dates, selections, users, attachments and more.
- The flow is the path a request takes after it is submitted: approvals by people, roles or organization units, conditions that branch on form values, timers, notifications and, if enabled, calls to other systems.
For example, a leave request can go to the employee's team lead, then to HR only when more than five days are requested, and finally notify the employee of the result.
Key concepts
| Concept | Description |
|---|---|
| Workflow definition | A request type, for example "Leave request". It has a form, a flow and a trigger. |
| Draft and version | You edit a draft. Publishing turns the draft into a new version (v1, v2, …). Requests that are already running keep the version they started with. |
| Trigger | How requests are started: Manual (from the Request Catalog), Scheduled or Public form. |
| Request | One run of a workflow, started by a requester. Each request gets a reference number and a timeline. |
| Task | A decision assigned to an approver. Tasks appear in the Approval Inbox. |
| Delegation | A period during which an approver's tasks go to a colleague. |
Where to find it
The workflow pages are tenant pages. Log in as a tenant user to use them.
| Menu | Pages |
|---|---|
| Workflows | Start a Request, My Requests, Approval Inbox, Workflow Delegations |
| Workflows > Workflow Administration | Workflow Definitions, Workflow Templates, Workflow Instances, Workflow Operations, Workflow Audit, Process analytics, Workflow Settings and the pages of optional features (events, AI, secrets, connection profiles, action catalog) |
The host has a separate Workflows menu with Workflow Health and Workflow AI usage. Host administrators configure the defaults and limits that apply to every tenant in Administration > Settings > Workflows.
The menus are only shown when workflows are enabled and the user has the related permissions. See Workflow Administration for the settings and permissions.
Documents
- Create Your First Workflow: A step-by-step tutorial that builds and runs a leave request workflow. Start here.
- Workflow Designer: The form builder, every step type, approvers, conditions, triggers, validation, simulation and versions.
- Requests and Approvals: Starting requests, deciding on tasks, requesting changes and delegating.
- Workflow Administration: Host and tenant settings, permissions and the monitoring pages.
