2 Description
This section provides context for this Building Block.
Short Description
The Workflow Building Block helps to drive efficiency within GovStack by providing automation and orchestration capabilities for specified business processes within and across Building Blocks. The Workflow Building Block provides design-time mapping & modeling of business processes based on mature open standards like Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) and facilitates the run-time execution of deployed workflows in order to orchestrate process flows from initiation to completion.
Full Description
The Workflow Building Block helps automate and control the flow of information and activities within and across various services based on predefined protocols. Workflow “processes” involve “steps” (things to be done), “gateways” (conditional logic), and “events” (things that happen). These processes may guide software systems to automate data exchange based on certain events or conditions. In addition to accelerating and automating information flow, it can be used as a mechanism to encourage or enforce best practices such as adherence to data standards, clinical guidelines, and policy.
It is important to note that from the perspective of the Workflow Building Block, any process may be defined and may make use of APIs across several applications and ministries (so long as it has access to those APIs via the Information Mediator).
From the high-level view, we should recognize that some instances of a Workflow Building Block may be deployed, for example, in the Ministry of Health (MoH) and only access services in the MoH, but another may be deployed in the MoH and access services provided by the Ministry of Insurance (MoI). So long as MoH’s Workflow Building Block is authorized to access the service at MoI (via the Information Mediator) then it will work just fine.
When to use a workflow engine
It should be noted that candidate applications playing the role of the Workflow Building Block are not always responsible for controlling the logical flow of data or automation of business processes.
There are many cases where a Building Block application will make a request to another GovStack service (via the Information Mediator) or to an external service (via an API gateway, for example) which does not involve workflow at all.
There are also plenty of cases where some slightly more complex automation will be a natural, already existing, in-built feature of some other application that's playing the role of, e.g. the Messaging specification. Let's consider an example.
The messaging spec might require that candidates be able to send SMS messages.
The Messaging Building Block might not require that all candidates be able to send a message, wait for a reply, and then send a canned response based on the reply.
But the logic defined in point 2 is so common in the messaging world, it would not be surprising to find that many Messaging Building Block candidates provide this type of business logic automation "out-of-the-box".
In this case, we'd expect an implementer to use that out-of-the-box functionality rather than also deploying a workflow engine candidate alongside the messaging candidate.
However, and this is the important part, if that feature (automating the logic in step 2) was not already part of an existing digital public good, we would recommend that a GovStack implementer should deliver that business process automation using a workflow engine, rather than making costly extensions to the candidate application itself. I.e., don't code new business logic if you don't have to and there's not high re-use value. Use a workflow engine. That's what it's there for.
The only caveat to point 4 is that certain "built-in" business logic automation provided by other applications might be avoided if you're opting for a GovStack implementation style in which a very large portion of interactions are catalogued in the audit trails generated by independent security servers. Then, even though the "built-in" logic is more convenient and affordable, you'd opt to activate a workflow process stored in a workflow engine candidate to generate a more robust audit trail.
Example
The “Process Visit & Request Child Counselor” process is implemented using a Workflow Building Block installed at the Ministry of Health.
Receive webhook event from clinic system with a new patient visit.
Make GET request to another Ministry of Health API to retrieve full patient data.
Find patient date_of_birth in the response to the above request, calculate age from date of birth.
Make a POST request to the Ministry of Insurance with patient_id and age to register the visit.
Make a POST request to a Messaging Building Block to send an SMS to the patient.
If the patient’s age is less than 18, make a POST request to a Messaging Building Block to send an email to staff members at the clinic requesting a child counselor to be assigned to this patient.
Make a POST request to the original clinic system, notifying them that the workflow process has been completed.
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