• Compare
• Company
  • Leadership
  • Careers
  • Partners
  • Press Room
  • Events
• Solutions
• Products
  • Password Manager
  • User Manager
  • Group Manager
  • Exchange Manager
  • SharePoint Manager
  • Connectors
  • Dot Net Workflow

Workflow Services

An Enterprise Workflow Server Platform

The ability to automate, standardize and continuously optimize business processes is important to the growth and survival of organizations — and is a key factor in the success or failure of compliance and governance initiatives. The Dot Net Workflow platform provides a proven, secure enterprise solution for the rapid design and fault-tolerant hosting of workflows that automate business-specific processes and it is ideal as a platform for secure enterprise application development.

The Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) is a workflow framework and a key component of the .NET platform, designed to allow developers to code workflow-based applications on a rich API framework. As a framework, WF is a very powerful but lean developer technology targeted for use by Independent Software Vendors. Dot Net Workflow is a product built on this technology to provide an out-of-the-box solution for developing and running workflow-driven applications and it represents dozens of man years in its development of a robust enterprise workflow server, code less UI generation, claims-based federation, workflow approval routing, RBAC security, and communication services that are available for accelerated development of mature workflow applications.

Dot Net Workflow delivers the following key requirements of an enterprise workflow platform:

Distributable and Scalable Workflow Server

Workflow Services are the hosting components responsible for managing the execution of Windows Workflow Foundation applications in large distributed environments. The Enterprise Workflow Server is a distributable and scalable multi-instance 64-bit Windows Service capable of handling the most demanding, high-volume environments. It is built on top of the Windows Workflow Runtime, which provides the enterprise scale workflow execution and management capabilities of the Enterprise Workflow Server. While one does not directly interact with the workflow engine, it is at the heart of the Enterprise Workflow Server, coordinating all aspects of workflow execution. The Dot Net Workflow engine relies on the Windows Workflow Runtime to execute workflows and it is capable of executing any Windows Workflow Foundation compatible workflow.

Workflow services leverages the Dot Net Workflow base agent platform, which is a next generation web services model that allows any number of workflow servers to be running in parallel at one time, to be distributed across firewall boundaries with secure encrypted web services communication, and to perform automatic load-balancing and failover.

Workflow Security, Task Tracking, and Email Notifications

Workflows created on the Dot Net Workflow platform benefit from the extensive security and authorizations services that the platform provides. All Workflows are secure resources in the RBAC metadirectory whose access can be controlled via granular delegation policies. End users can only see and execute workflows in the user interface where they have been granted the Initiator right. This security mechanism allows organizations to create dynamic pages and catalogs of self-service workflows where users only see the workflows intended for their use. The security model extends beyond just the workflows, allowing control over the visibility of data in workflow processes, the buttons and other controls in the UI, as well as the pages themselves.

The Dot Net Workflow platform also includes out-of-the-box facilities that automatically handle approval routing, task-tracking dashboard entry creation, audit logging, and email notifications. In order to leverage this rich plumbing, developers can access the Wizards in Workflow Studio to generate special workflow shapes known as operation activities. Operations are workflow shapes that represent protected code actions that can be delegated to individual people or groups, or used with role assignments. When these activities execute in a workflow, they perform a real-time authorization check that determines whether a person attempting to execute an action against a resource has a role that allows them to do so. If the current person does not have the required rights, the mini workflow handles any approval routing, creation of task-tracking dashboard entries, and email notifications. Standard user interfaces provide a view of the outstanding and completed workflow requests that a user has either initiated or in which they participate. In addition, a friendly Service Catalog shows the user a categorized list of any workflows they are able to initiate. Both the Workflow Task List and the Service Catalog are visible in the web, Silverlight, and the WPF client. These features free workflow developers from the labor-intensive coding associated with creating reusable workflow shapes, allowing them to instead focus on higher value tasks like designing processes and creating business specific logic.

Workflows Versioning and Distributed Updates

The Dot Net Workflow platform stores all workflows and their components in the metadirectory. Workflows are compiled to dlls using Workflow Studio and published into the metadirectory over web services. Workflow servers then download all the latest workflow versions and run them locally. This hub-and-spoke methodology ensures that all workflow servers can process any new or older version of a workflow. As workflow processes can be very long running, often sitting idle for weeks waiting for an approval, changes can occur to workflow designs before any particular workflow finishes its course of action. This requires that any new versions of a workflow be able to run side-by-side with an older version that has yet to complete. Dot Net Workflow includes a versioning system that supports this scenario, allowing any number of versions to run side-by-side. Version numbers are incremented by workflow developers in the Workflow Studio tool when publishing their changes.

Workflows as Web Services

The Dot Net Workflow platform provides an easy-to-use mechanism for securely exposing any workflow as a web service. Workflows can be exposed for integration with other identity management platforms or existing request management systems. The logic and heavy lifting done in the workflow process can be performed using the easy-to-design workflow processes while leveraging the existing management or request systems that are already in place.

Business Rules Engine

The Business Rule Engine (BRE) is a key component of the Enterprise Workflow Server that enables workflow applications and activities to consume centralized logic that is created and maintained outside of the workflows. This approach makes it possible to reuse and share vital workflow logic across processes and to quickly adapt to changing business requirements. A BRE application can also be published as a claims-aware web service that enables enterprise-wide consumption from any .NET-based application. Although a BRE application resides in the Enterprise Workflow Server, the business rule engine executes in a separate application domain in the context of the host process. The business rule engine manages and executes BRE applications when requested by a workflow and/or an activity. When published as a web service, the BRE application is hosted as a federated web service on the Workflow Server. Federated services allow for single sign-on and provide greater security for encrypted cross organization communications.

Why Dot Net Workflow Services

The Microsoft .NET Windows Workflow Foundation provides a powerful development model for creating business processes that truly can be designed visually. The Dot Net Workflow unlocks this potential and turns the programming model into a suite of robust enterprise scalable services for rapidly creating secure and interactive workflow-driven applications. Dot Net Workflow is the premier Windows Workflow Foundation development environment for organizations creating solutions on the .NET WF platform. Key features include:

• Robust 64-bit multi-threaded worker process Windows Service architecture
• Cloud supported model with a distributed workflow server engine that provides for full web service and federation protocol (SAML, WS-Fed, OpenID) support
• Rich and easy-to-use visual workflow designer
• What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) user interface designers
• Automated platform for approval routing, auditing, email alerting, and task tracking
• Team-based development environment with source control and workflow design versioning
• Support for flow chart, sequential, and state machine workflow models
• Automated workflow distribution and versioning
• Ability to expose any workflow as a secure web service
• Scheduled workflows
• Event based workflows
• Wizard-driven escalation configuration
• Built-in support for delayed or scheduled execution of any action
• Permanent workflows that behave like Windows Services
• Fault tolerance and failover for scaling in large enterprises