Let's start with a little vocabulary. Workflow Types are the configuration patterns that a specific Workflow will use to execute. As an example, you might configure an HR Position Approval workflow type that an employee uses to initiate an IT Director Position Request workflow. Attributes Attributes are the data elements your workflow needs to be able to process. For the External Inquiry example workflow type that ships with Rock, we'll need information about the requester (name, email address, phone) as well as the topic, message and campus. Once we have the input from the guest, we'll also need attributes that store the person being assigned to the inquiry as well as any notes that they enter. Attributes can represent many types of data including text, numbers, images, locations, a person, date and more. Let's take a tour of the workflow configurator located under Admin Tools > General Settings > Workflow Configuration. We'll break the screen down into parts to help simplify our discussion. View a Workflow Type On the Workflow Configuration detail screen, you can view important information about your workflow type. Workflow Type Navigation - Shows workflow categories and the workflow types in each category. While you can nest categories, it's best to keep your structure relatively flat.Name - The name of the workflow type.Description - The description of the workflow type. You should make this as detailed as possible since it acts as documentation for your workflow type.Activities - This lists each of the activities configured in the workflow type. For each activity it also lists their actions. This section is a form of auto-documentation if you provide clear names and descriptions for your activities and actions.Copy - Many workflow types are similar. To help you create new workflow types that are similar to ones you already use, Rock allows you to make a copy of an existing workflow type to use as a starting point for creating a new one.Action Buttons - Here you can launch the workflow, view a list of workflow instances, edit security and export the workflow type. Security will determine who is able to view a workflow as well as manage (via the Edit permission) a workflow type.Change Log - Workflow types can change over time and might be worked on by more than one person. Use the Change Log to add notes about what was changed by clicking the ti ti-plus button. Keeping a good change log will help your future self, as well as others, understand what changes have been made and can be very valuable for troubleshooting. Edit a Workflow Type Clicking the Edit button takes you to the edit screen for that workflow type. This screen is made up of several sections, which are explained below. Details The first section is the Details section. Let's take a look at what it includes. Name - The name associated with the workflow type.Active - Determines if the workflow type is active. This is helpful if you'd like to prevent new workflows from being created but would like to keep the workflow type around to view previous workflow instances.Automatically Persisted - We’ll discuss persisted vs. non-persisted workflows in detail below. Just know this is where you set the persistence type.Description - While you may be tempted to skip over the description, we highly recommend that you enter a detailed description of your workflow covering when it should be used and its basic functionality.Work Term - The term you will use to describe an instance of the workflow. For example, an IT work request may use the term Request while our inquiry example would use Inquiry.Workflow Number Prefix - While every workflow will have a unique system ID, Rock also generates a workflow instance ID for the type. This makes for more logical and consistent IDs. The Workflow Number Prefix allows you to optionally add an alpha-numeric prefix to the workflow instance ID. So instead of having an ID of, say, 00001 you can have something like POS0001.Category - Workflow types are grouped into categories for organization. Workflow security is inherited from the Category's security settings, so pick carefully. If the workflow type needs different security though, you can override security settings on the type.Icon CSS Class - You can provide a CSS icon to help distinguish your workflow type from others. By default, Rock supports the Tabler. These icons should be in the form ti-ti-[icon name] as pictured in the example.Slug - Unique identifier for this workflow type, often used in links. Advanced Settings The next section is the Advanced Settings section. Processing Interval - Persisted workflows that are still active are run on a routine basis to see if there are any actions that can be completed. How often your workflow is run depends on this setting. To reduce the overhead on your server, you'll want to set this interval wisely.Logging Level - Logging is used to help debug (find logic errors) in your workflows. You can set the logging level to match the verboseness you need (None is nothing while Action is pretty much everything).Maximum Workflow Age - For a variety of reasons, some workflows can hang around without ever being completed. This setting lets you automatically complete workflows that are older than the number of days provided, based on the date the workflow was created. Especially when used with the Completed Workflow Retention Period (see next item below) this can help keep your list of workflows clean and tidy.Completed Workflow Retention Period - This is where you can specify how many days you want to keep a completed workflow before it's deleted. Over time your list of workflows will grow, including some workflows you'll only need for a limited amount of time. By default, workflows are never deleted, so you might find your list getting cluttered. Setting a value here allows you to routinely and automatically clean up your workflows. If you never want the workflow to be removed, leave this field blank.Log Retention Period - This setting only applies if you've provided a Logging Level value other than "None". Because logs take up space, and because they're mostly used temporarily for debugging purposes, you probably want to clean them out once they're no longer needed. Logs will be deleted if they are older than the time period you provide here.No Action Message - You can customize the message that's displayed in scenarios where a workflow of this type is active but does not have an active entry form. There's generally no need to make changes here.Summary View - This template is used to display the workflow Summary when viewing workflow details. For the most part you shouldn't need to make changes here, but keep in mind that any changes you do make will only apply to the workflow type being edited. Attributes Next is the Attributes section. Attributes are the data elements your workflow needs to be able to process. In this section you configure each of these elements and define the types of data they will store (i.e., text, numbers, dates, people, groups, etc.) While it might be tempting to rush and define your attributes quickly by providing only a name and field type, it's wise to slow down and provide a good description of how the attribute will be used in the workflow. Trust us, you'll thank yourself later. Also, consider if a default value would make sense in your workflow. NoteSave TimeSometimes adding a good default value for your attribute can save steps in your workflow as you will only need to set the value of an attribute if a change is needed. Activities/Actions Finally, there is the Activities section. Activities and actions are the meat and potatoes of workflows. They control the flow logic that your workflow will use when it's processed. While we'll be talking about activities and actions in detail later, know that this is where you'll configure them for your workflow types. TipBe sure to check out the Workflow Actions article for more details. As you build more complex workflows you might start to get confused about which box is an activity and which is an action. Just remember activities have a gear and lightning bolt (ti ti-settings-bolt) next to their titles while actions have a single bolt (ti ti-bolt).