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About workflow participants

A workflow participant is any user or group who is assigned to process work in a workflow. A workflow author, administrator, or tracker can assign any user or group as a participant for a particular step in a workflow. When the workflow is running, work assigned to a participant appears in that participant's Inbox.

An author can also define workflow groups within a specific workflow definition, which are placeholders for one or more users or groups. The members of a workflow group typically perform a particular job function in a workflow; for example, claims adjustors or supervisors. A workflow group can be the assigned participant for any step.

For flexibility in defining a workflow, the author can either assign one or more specific participants to a workflow group, or allow the participants to be assigned later, either as part of the launch process or at a particular step when the workflow is running. This technique of including unspecified workflow groups in the workflow definition is useful when the participant for a step is likely to change each time the workflow runs. For example, in a Travel Authorization workflow with a Supervisor Approval step, the actual supervisor could be different each time the workflow runs. In the workflow definition, the workflow author creates a workflow group named Supervisor, and assigns Supervisor as the participant for the Travel Approval step. Each user who submits the travel request and launches the workflow indicates which user (his supervisor) is assigned to the workflow group named Supervisor.

NOTE At runtime, if a step is assigned to a participant that does not exist in the current system, or to a workflow group that does not have at least one participant, that step cannot execute and the workflow will stop. Therefore, an author who leaves a workflow group unspecified in the workflow definition must be sure to prompt the user to designate at least one member of the workflow group before any steps are routed to that group.

TIP A workflow group is defined within a particular workflow definition, which means that the same workflow group name can consist of different users in different workflow definitions.

For any step, the author can:

  • Allow workflow participants to see which users are assigned to workflow groups.
  • Allow workflow participants to assign different users to workflow groups.

Administrators and trackers can also assign users, groups, and workflow groups to any step in a running workflow.

NOTE  For systems using Active Directory, if a base group has been set above Users and Groups, members of that Builtin group will be available for selection in user and group lists. These users should not be used as workflow participants.