About the IDE

The Workflow Studio IDE is where you develop EmpowerID workflows. It comprises four user interface components that work together to provide developers with a visual design environment. Through friendly drag-and-drop operations, depictions of business processes can be translated quickly into workflow logic without the need for extensive code. This can be as simple as dragging predefined activities onto the design surface of the IDE and connecting those activities with flow lines. Code editors allow C# code to be injected into the process when desired to create a complete package.

The below image shows what the Workflow Studio IDE looks like with a Flow Chart workflow opened in the Workflow Designer (also known as the Document Space.

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As depicted by the above image, the Workflow Studio IDE is comprised of four components – the Toolbar, the Solution Explorer, the Document Space, and the Toolbox – each of which combines to create a rich, interactive environment for workflow development.

Workflow Studio Toolbar

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

Toolbar Commands

Solution Explorer

The Solution Explorer tab in Workflow Studio is an essential tool for organizing, accessing, and managing your workflow applications and other objects within the development environment. The three sub-tabs within the Solution Explorer provide different functionality to help you efficiently work with your projects:

1. Workspace tab: The Workspace tab displays all the objects you develop in Workflow Studio, organized into folders on your local development machine. These folders act as containers for holding and organizing your workflow applications, activities, user interface elements, and other objects. You can create new folders, add objects to existing folders, and manage the contents of your workspace through this tab. As you develop new objects, Workflow Studio prompts you to select the folder where the object should be placed, ensuring that your workspace remains organized and easy to navigate.

2. Search tab: The Search tab allows you to search for objects by name and type, making it easy to quickly locate specific items within your workspace. This functionality is especially useful when working with large projects or searching for objects across multiple folders.

3. SharePoint tab: The SharePoint tab enables you to work with your SharePoint objects, integrating them into your EmpowerID workflows as needed. This functionality allows for seamless collaboration and integration between your EmpowerID projects and SharePoint resources.

Overall, the Solution Explorer tab in Workflow Studio provides a comprehensive and user-friendly interface for managing your workflow applications and objects. By organizing your projects in folders and providing easy access to search and integration features, the Solution Explorer helps you maintain an efficient and streamlined development process.

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

Additionally, the Workspace tab of 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.

Document Space

The Document Space in Workflow Studio is where you work with various designers and editors to develop and edit workflow applications, activities, forms, and lookup controls. The designers and editors offer visual design capabilities, making it easy to create and modify your workflow components without extensive coding. Some of the key designers and editors in Workflow Studio include:

1. Workflow Designer – The Workflow Designer allows you to visually design workflow applications and access all necessary commands and editors to build a complete workflow application. It provides tabs for designing the workflow, managing properties, creating bindings, setting up external rules, and viewing source code.
   
   

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   When you open a workflow in Workflow Studio, you gain access to several workflow-related tabs that provide different functionalities to assist you in designing and managing the workflow process. These tabs include:

   • Workflow Designer Tab – In this tab, you create and modify the workflow visually by adding shapes and connecting them with lines and Business Rules (line rules) to define the process flow within the workflow.

   • Properties Tab – This tab provides a tree view of the workflow's properties. By clicking on a property, you can view its details. To add new properties to the workflow, right-click the base node in the tree and select "Add New Property" from the context menu.

   • Bindings Tab – The Bindings Tab displays two tree views showing the workflow's properties and the properties of each shape within the workflow. Using simple drag-and-drop operations, you can bind workflow and shape or activity properties to one another by dragging a property from one tree onto the corresponding property in the other tree. This binding allows you to visually maintain data consistency throughout the workflow process execution.

   • External Rules Tab – This tab is similar to the Bindings tab, but it displays two different tree views for binding properties in your workflow application. One tree shows the properties of the workflow and any shapes or activities within the workflow, while the other tree displays the Smart Object properties of any External Business Rule Application added to the workflow. This enables you to bind workflow properties to the Smart Object properties of the External Business Rule Application.

   • Source Code Tab: This tab allows you to view and edit the source code of the workflow application, providing an opportunity to further customize the workflow by modifying or adding custom code if necessary.

2. Activity Designer: The Activity Designer lets you visually design workflow activities and access all commands and editors needed to build a complete workflow activity that can be associated with a workflow. It offers virtually the same tabs as the Workflow Designer.
   
   

    

3. Form Designer: The Form Designer enables you to visually design forms by dragging and dropping user interface components and controls onto the canvas. No coding is necessary, and you can create forms for various data types, from primitive types like strings to more complex types based on registered RBAC components. Once a form is published, a "Form activity" is generated and published to the EmpowerID Identity Warehouse, allowing you to use the form within a workflow.
   
   

    

4. Lookup Designer: The Lookup Designer is used to create and edit Lookup controls, which are searchable grids for looking up and selecting objects within the EmpowerID Identity Warehouse. The type of objects returned by the Lookup is based on the method call selected when designing the Lookup, which initiates a specific stored procedure against the EmpowerID Identity Warehouse for a particular resource type. For example, when creating a Lookup that calls the GetAllSearch(string columnsToSearch, string textToSearch) method against the ManagementRoleView, it will execute the dbo.custom_ManagementRoleView_GetAllSearch stored procedure. This allows users to search and select objects such as groups, managers, or other resources during various stages of a workflow process, making the workflow more dynamic and adaptable to different scenarios.

   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

   
   In the given example, the procedure returns fields based on the columns added to the designer. Specifically, it returns ManagementRoleID, DisplayName, Name, Parent Management Role Definition, Extension Attribute 1, and Extension Attribute 2.

Toolbox

The Workflow Studio Toolbox, located on the right side of the IDE, offers access to various features related to workflow development and project management. It consists of four tabs: Activities Toolbox, Solution, Properties, and Workflows, each with its distinct functionality. Depending on the type of object open in the Document Space, some tabs may be more relevant to your project than others. The purpose of each tab is discussed in more detail below.

The Activities Toolbox

The Activities tab displays icons for all activities published to the Workflow Server(s) in your environment. Once an activity is published, it becomes available as a toolbox item that can be dragged 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 other activities.

The Activity Toolbox includes a Search field and a Category drop-down, both of which help you refine the list of displayed activities. The Search field filters activities based on the string value entered. To search for an activity, simply input the name of the activity or text found in the activity's description. This search is conducted across all activities, irrespective of the selected category. If you want to broaden the search to a category of activity, you can use the Category drop-down list to locate activities sorted by category.

The Solution Tab

The Solution Tab offers access to the Code Tree, presenting a logically organized tree view of files associated with the object currently open in the Document Space. It also provides placeholders for adding new files, such as custom methods and classes. Expanding a node in the Code Tree lets you view the project files related to that node and access relevant commands, enabling 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 shows the commands available from the Code Tree for workflow applications:

The Properties Tab

The Properties Tab in Workflow Studio displays the browsable properties of the currently selected object or document in the Document Workspace. This tab provides a convenient way to view and edit the properties of the selected item directly without having to navigate to another interface. The property grid typically displays properties in a two-column layout, with the property names on the left and their corresponding values on the right.

For example, if you select the "SelectTargetGroups" activity within a workflow, the Properties Tab will show all the relevant properties for that activity, such as its name, description, execution order, input and output properties, and any other configurable settings. You can modify these properties directly in the property grid, and the changes will be applied to the object immediately.

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

The visibility of a property in the property grid can be controlled using the Browsable attribute. When you create dependency properties for activities, you have the option to choose whether to display the property in the property grid by selecting or deselecting the "Show in property grid" checkbox. This allows you to determine which properties are easily accessible and editable within the grid.

It's important to note that public properties without the Browsable attribute are displayed in the property grid by default. If you want to hide a public property from the property grid, you can explicitly set the Browsable attribute to false. This can be useful when you want to limit the visibility of certain properties to maintain a clean and organized property grid, or when you want to prevent users from accidentally modifying properties that should remain constant throughout the workflow design process.