The Workflow Engine creates new process instances each time a workflow process definition is enacted in the application. The Workflow Administration functionality enables an administrator to monitor and control these process instances. An administrator may search for process instances based on details of the process definition used to create that instance, the tasks related to a process instance or by the events that the activity instances contained within the process instance are waiting on.
The details of a process instance may also be viewed. The details include a graphical view of the process instance which displays all of the activities in the associated process definition as well as highlighting those that have actually been executed (i.e. the path through the process). Details of the data used in that process instance as well as the data for each activity instance within the process instance is also available here for examination by an administrator.
The state of a process instance may also be managed as functions available to suspend a process instance, resume a process instance or indeed abort a process instance. Errors may also occur during the lifecycle of a process instance and these are also displayed here. An administrator may view the details of the error and based on this information may retry or discard the associated error.
Manual and decision activities both have allocation strategies which determine the users who will be assigned to the tasks created by the Workflow Engine for these activity types. Workflow allocation targets are one type of allocation strategy that can be used for this purpose and the creation and maintenance of these targets are managed here. Events are raised by application functions and the Workflow Engine uses them to transition workflows which are waiting on those events. These are also created and maintained by the available Workflow Administration functions.
Further details on the available administration functions are available in Workflow Administration.