About the IDE

The Workflow Studio ribbon provides immediate access to a variety of tools and application-specific development tabbed toolbars. The toolbars are dynamic in that the number of tabs and commands available on the ribbon at any given time is determined by the number and types of designers and editors opened in the IDE.

Common Toolbar

The Common toolbar contains a number of command buttons that allow you to perform general tasks when working in the IDE.

Build Toolbar

The Build toolbar contains a number of commands relevant to publishing projects created in Workflow Studio.

Tools Toolbar

The Tools toolbar contains commands for performing a number of Workflow Studio maintenance tasks.

Workspace Toolbar

The Workspace toolbar contains commands relevant to the Workspace, which is a local copy of the Workflow Studio Source Control. The workspace can be individualized with selected packages and package items.

Options and Settings Toolbar

The Options and Settings toolbar contains commands that allow you to perform various actions.

Workflow Editing Toolbar

The Workflow Editing toolbar contains commands related to designing workflows and activities. This toolbar only appears when a workflow is open in the Workflow Designer or an activity is open in the Activity Designer. 

Form Designer Toolbar

The Form Designer toolbar contains commands related to designing forms. This toolbar only appears when a form is open in the Form Designer.

Lookup Designer Toolbar

The Lookup Designer toolbar contains commands related to Lookup Control design. This toolbar only appears when the Lookup Designer is open.

The Solution Explorer is comprised of several tabbed views that provide access to the Workflow components in your development environment.

• Server Explorer Tab - Provides a view of the EmpowerID servers and EmpowerID services in your environment.

• Solution Explorer Tab - Provides a view of the workflow objects in your development environment.

• Windows Form Toolbox Tab - Provides access to common Windows Form objects that can be used when developing Windows Forms in Workflow Studio.

Each of these is discussed in further detail below.

Servers Tab

Select the Servers tab to display a tree view of EmpowerID servers and their status in your environment. Expand a server node to display the EmpowerID services installed on that server. Right-click a node to open a context menu that allows you to select various options for that node.

Solution Explorer Tab

The Solution Explorer tab provides access to the workflow applications and other objects that exist in the EmpowerID Identity Warehouse. It is comprised of three sub-tabs for managing these applications: the Workspace tab, which gives you access to all the objects you develop in Workflow Studio; the Search tab, which allows you to search for objects by name and type; and the SharePoint tab, which allows you to work with your SharePoint objects. Of the three, the Workspace Tab provides the greatest functionality for working with and managing the objects developed in Workflow Studio.

Using the Workspace Tab

In Workflow Studio, the workflow applications and other objects that you develop are classified as or solution items and placed in folders you create on your local development machine. These folders are simply containers for holding the items you are developing and are represented as nodes in the Source Control tree visible from the Workspace tab of the Solution Explorer. Each time you create a new workflow, activity, user interface element, or other object, Workflow Studio prompts you for the folder in which the object should be placed and then places that within a Source Control folder underneath the selected folder. While Workflow Studio gives you some freedom in placing folders and folder items, Source Control folders are predetermined by their content and cannot be moved or deleted. If a Source Control folder does not exist for a particular package item being created, Workflow Studio will create that Source Control folder at the time the item is created and then place the item in the folder.

Workflow Studio allows you to determine which folders and folder items you want to appear in your Workspace. You can opt to have all folders and folder items that exist in the Identity Warehouse appear in your Workspace or pick and choose only those items with which you are working. When you start Workflow Studio for the first time, your Workspace will contain no workflow items and you will be prompted by the Workspace dialog to add items.

If you click No, the dialog closes, allowing you to proceed. If you click Yes, the Source Control dialog opens. The Source Control dialog contains two panes, the Team Source Control pane on the left and the Workspace Source Control pane on the right. The Team Source Control pane displays the Source Control tree populated with every folder and folder item that exists in the EmpowerID Identity Warehouse. The Workspace Source Control pane displays every folder and folder item that exists in your personal Workspace.

To add folders and folder items to your Workspace, you simply locate the folders and/or folder items in the Source Control tree of the Team Source Control pane and then click the button with the right arrow to move them to the Workspace Source Control pane.

Source Control folders exist for each item type that can be created in Workflow Studio and encompass the following:

These Source Control folders ensure consistent project structure and placement of objects within the Source Control tree for every Workspace. If you or another team member create a new form, it will always be placed in the User Interface/Forms Source Control folder and never the Workflow Applications folder, which is reserved for workflow applications only.

Additionally, the Workspace tab in Solution Explorer gives you ready access to the commands associated with folder and folder items. These commands are accessible from a context menu that appears when right-clicking an object in the Workspace Source Control tree. The number of commands available from the context menu depend on the particular object that has been right-clicked. Commands relevant to that object are enabled, while commands not relevant are grayed out and not selectable.

The following image shows the commands menu that appears when right-clicking on one of the nodes in the Workspace Source Control tree. The commands available depend on the particular node selected.

Open

Windows Form Tab

The Windows Form Toolbox contains common Windows Forms controls that can be dragged onto a Windows Form that you are designing in Workflow Studio. Once a control has been added to a Windows Form, you can manipulate the properties and write event-handling code as you would with Visual Studio.

The Document Space is reserved for Workflow Studio designers and editors. Most of the work you do in Workflow Studio is accomplished through one or more designers and editors, which are commonly referred to as development tools. In Workflow Studio, designers provide for rapid visual application development, enabling you to organize and present application content at design time. Editors provide intellisense-enabled C# and XML language support for editing code and appear in the Document Space as a tab when that feature is relevant to the object you open in the Document Space. For example, the C# Editor appears for workflows, activities, lookup controls, and forms are open in the Document Space, but does not appear for reports, menus, and pages. In those cases, the editor that appears is the XML Markup Editor.

As a workflow developer, the designers most relevant to you include the following:

• Workflow Designer — The Workflow Designer opens whenever a new workflow application is created or an existing workflow application is being edited. The Workflow Designer allows you to visually design workflow applications and gives you access to all the commands and editors necessary to build a complete workflow application.

  
  When you open a workflow, Workflow Studio gives you access to the following workflow-related tabs:

  • Workflow Designer Tab — This is where you draw the workflow, adding shapes and connecting them to one another with lines and Business Rules (line rules) to dictate the process flow that should occur in that workflow.

  • Properties Tab — This provides a tree view of the workflow's properties. Clicking a property allows you to view the details of that property. You can add new properties to a workflow by right-clicking the base node in the tree and selecting Add New Property from the context menu.

     

  • Bindings Tab — This tab displays duplicate tree views of the workflow's properties, as well as the properties of each shape added to the workflow. From this tab you can bind workflow and shape or activity properties to one another using simple-drag-and-drop operations by which you drag an object's property from one tree onto the property of an object in the other tree. Binding properties in this way allows you to visually maintain the consistency of data throughout the execution of the workflow process.

     

  • External Rules Tab — This tab is similar to the Bindings tab in that it displays two tree views for use in binding properties used in your workflow application. In this case, however, the trees are not duplicates of one another — one tree displays the properties of the workflow and any shapes or activities belonging to that workflow while the other tree displays the Smart Object properties of any External Business Rule Application that has been added the workflow. This allows you to bind workflow properties to the Smart Object properties of the External Business Rule Application.

     

  • Source Code — This tab allows you to view source code of the workflow application.

     

• Activity Designer — In Workflow Studio, an activity represents the logic for a step within the workflow. The Activity Designer opens whenever a new activity is created or an existing activity is being edited. The Activity Designer allows you to visually design workflow activities and gives you access to all the commands and editors necessary to build a complete workflow activity that can then be associated with a workflow. Opening an activity gives you access to virtually the same tabs available to you when designing a workflow in the Workflow Designer.

   

• Form Designer — The Form Designer opens whenever a new form is created or an existing form is being edited. The Form Designer allows you to visually design forms and gives you access to all the commands and editors needed to build a complete form that can be associated with workflows. The Form Designer provides a drag-and-drop canvas that allows you to easily and quickly create a form by dropping user interface components and controls onto the designer. No coding is necessary, meaning that you can create forms quickly to capture any type of data—from primitive types, such as a string—to more complex types based on registered RBAC components. In addition, you can create your own components and controls and register them for use in the Form Designer. Forms must be published to the Enterprise Workflow Server before they can be used in a workflow.

  
  When you publish a form in Workflow Studio, a special activity, known as a "Form activity" is generated and published to the EmpowerID Identity Warehouse. In this activity, each field added to the form is generated as a dependency property. Then, when using the form within a workflow, you can use the drag-and-drop property binding capabilities of Workflow Studio to send data to and from the form to any other part of the workflow.
  
  

• Lookup Designer — The Lookup Designer opens whenever a new Lookup control is created or an existing Lookup control is being edited. Lookup controls are used in workflows to provide workflow users with searchable grids for looking up and selecting objects contained in the EmpowerID Identity Warehouse for use at various points in a given workflow process. Examples include selecting a group to join or assigning a manager for a new hire. The type of objects returned by the Lookup is based on the method call selected when designing the Lookup. Each method call initiates a specific stored procedure against the EmpoweID Identity Warehouse for a specific resource type. For example, in the below image, the Lookup calls the GetAllSearch(string columnsToSearch, string textToSearch) method against the ManagementRoleView. This executes the dbo.custom_ManagementRoleView_GetAllSearch stored procedure.
  
  

  ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[Custom_ManagementRoleView_GetAllSearch] ( @ColumnsToSearch NVARCHAR(MAX) = null, @TextToSearch NVARCHAR(MAX) = null, @ResourceTags NVARCHAR(MAX) = NULL, @StartRow INT=0, @TotalRows INT=1000 ) AS SET NOCOUNT ON; DECLARE @Statement NVARCHAR(MAX) = '' EXEC [GenericSearchForResources] @Statement = @Statement, @ComponentName = 'ManagementRole', @ObjectName = 'ManagementRoleView', @ColumnsToSearch = @ColumnsToSearch, @TextToSearch = @TextToSearch, @OrderByClause = '[Name]', @ResourceTags = @ResourceTags, @ResourceTypeIDForTags = 40, @StartRow = @StartRow, @TotalRows = @TotalRows

  
  The fields returned by the procedure are determined by the columns added to the designer. In the above image, procedure returns the ManagementRoleID, DisplayName, Name, the Parent Management Role Definition, Extension Attribute 1, and Extension Attribute 2.

The Workflow Studio Toolbox is situated to the right of the IDE and provides access to a number of features related to workflow development and project management. The Toolbox is comprised of four tabs: the Activities Toolbox tab; the Solution tab; the Properties tab; and the Workflows tab. Each tab has its own unique function, and depending on the type of object open in the Document Space, some tabs will have more relevance to your project than others. The purpose of each is discussed in more detail below.

The Activities Tab

The Activities tab displays icons for all activities in your environment that have been published to the Workflow Server(s). Once an activity is published, it becomes available as a toolbox item that can be dragged from the toolbox and dropped onto the design surface of any workflow open in the Document Space. You can also drop activities onto the design surface of a select number of activities.

The Activity Toolbox provides a Search field and a Category drop-down, both of which can be used to narrow the amount of activities appearing in the toolbox. When using the Search field, the available activities are narrowed by the string value entered into the field. To search for an activity, you simply enter the name of the activity or text that can be found in the activity's description. This search is performed across all activities regardless of the category selected. If you wish to broaden the search to a category of activity, you can use the Category drop-down list to locate activities classified by category.

The following image shows the Activity Toolbox with the User Interface category selected from the Category drop-down list. This narrows the activities that are displayed in the toolbox to those with their ToolboxPath property set to User Interface.

The Solution Tab

The Solution Tab contains two sub-tabs for working with a project: the Code Tree tab and the Code Snippets tab.

• The Code Tree Tab — The Code Tree tab provides a logically organized tree view of the files associated with the object currently open in the Document Space and provides placeholders for adding new files, such as custom methods and classes. Expanding a node in the Code Tree allows you to view the files in your project related to that node and gives you access to the commands relevant to it, allowing you to add new assembly references, namespaces, support classes, and embedded resources to the project.

  
  Right-clicking on a node in the Code Tree allows you to access commands relevant to the files represented by that node, as well as the type of object open in the Document Space. The following table show the commands available from the Code Tree for workflow applications.

• The Code Snippets Tab — The Code Snippets tab displays any Code Snippets that you have added to a project or other team members have published. The Code Snippets tab behaves as a toolbox. Thus, as with the activities in the Activities Toolbox, you can drag a code snippet from the Toolbox and drop it into an open project to incorporate it. However, code snippets must be dropped onto an open Code Editor. They cannot be dropped onto the design surface of an object.
  
  

The Properties Tab

The Properties Tab provides immediate access to the browsable properties of the currently selected object or document in the Document Workspace. Changes made to property values shown in the property grid are committed immediately to the object.

The following image shows property grid displaying browsable properties for the SelectGroups activity.

Whether a property is displayed in the property grid can be controlled with the Browsable attribute. When you create dependency properties for activities you can select or deselect the Show in property grid checkbox, depending on whether you want to display the property in the property grid. Note that public properties without the Browsable attribute are displayed in the property grid by default.