Core Docs - Core Concepts - Workflow Types

Rock Version: v19.0
Last Modified: 2026-03-06 2:50 PM

Let's start with a little vocabulary. Workflow Types are the configuration patterns that a specific Workflow will use to execute. As an example, you might configure an HR Position Approval workflow type that an employee uses to initiate an IT Director Position Request workflow.

Attributes

Attributes are the data elements your workflow needs to be able to process. For the External Inquiry example workflow type that ships with Rock, we'll need information about the requester (name, email address, phone) as well as the topic, message and campus. Once we have the input from the guest, we'll also need attributes that store the person being assigned to the inquiry as well as any notes that they enter.

Attributes can represent many types of data including text, numbers, images, locations, a person, date and more.

Let's take a tour of the workflow configurator located under Admin Tools > General Settings > Workflow Configuration. We'll break the screen down into parts to help simplify our discussion.

View a Workflow Type

On the Workflow Configuration detail screen, you can view important information about your workflow type.

Edit a Workflow Type

Clicking the Edit button takes you to the edit screen for that workflow type. This screen is made up of several sections, which are explained below.

Details

The first section is the Details section. Let's take a look at what it includes.

Advanced Settings

The next section is the Advanced Settings section.

Attributes

Next is the Attributes section.

Attributes are the data elements your workflow needs to be able to process. In this section you configure each of these elements and define the types of data they will store (i.e., text, numbers, dates, people, groups, etc.)

While it might be tempting to rush and define your attributes quickly by providing only a name and field type, it's wise to slow down and provide a good description of how the attribute will be used in the workflow. Trust us, you'll thank yourself later. Also, consider if a default value would make sense in your workflow.

Save Time
Sometimes adding a good default value for your attribute can save steps in your workflow as you will only need to set the value of an attribute if a change is needed.

Activities/Actions

Finally, there is the Activities section.

Activities and actions are the meat and potatoes of workflows. They control the flow logic that your workflow will use when it's processed. While we'll be talking about activities and actions in detail later, know that this is where you'll configure them for your workflow types.

Be sure to check out the Workflow Actions article for more details.  

As you build more complex workflows you might start to get confused about which box is an activity and which is an action. Just remember activities have a gear and lightning bolt (ti ti-settings-bolt) next to their titles while actions have a single bolt (ti ti-bolt).