Windows Workflow Foundation (WF)

WF is Microsoft’s technology platform for building workflow-enabled applications. The platform includes a set of tools for designing and implementing workflows, a programming model for controlling and communicating with workflows, a rules engine, a workflow execution engine, and a set of workflow runtime services for persistence, tracking, transaction management and more.

Why Workflow?

Workflow technology makes it possible to automate business processes to increase the overall accuracy, efficiency and predictability of the logical activities coordinated within a process. Workflow increases visibility into a complex process and facilitates better communication between business users and technology.

WF is a developer tool designed to simplify this type of business process automation for Windows applications. WF supports sequential or state machine workflows. Developers use the Workflow Designer integrated with their familiar Visual Studio environment to organize activities into a workflow definition that satisfies business requirements. Business users can review the resulting workflow design to visualize the implementation and verify that it meets their requirements. The state of a long running workflow can be managed and traced with built-in services WF provides for persistence and tracking. Human workflow can be incorporated such that different applications and users can interact with a particular workflow instance at different stages of execution.