Application Designer (the "Applications" capability of CP4BA / Business Automation Studio) builds web applications from pages and data / service integrations; Workflow is one of the built-in integration types:
- Workflow discovery: in Application Designer, Business automations > add a Workflow resource: pick the process app / snapshot from Workflow Center and the exposed process, service or user task type; the designer generates a typed data source with operations (start process, get / claim / complete tasks) that pages bind to - no REST code.
- Task completion pages: a task type can be bound to a page so that Workplace opens your application page for that task instead of the coach (the "external implementation" idea, done in low-code). The page reads the task data, the submit action completes the task with output data.
- Authentication: the application runs under the user's Zen session; calls to Workflow are made with that identity (teams and roles apply), so no service accounts are needed.
// the generated operations are exposed to page scripts through the application's API object (names per release, e.g. this.apps / $app):
const res = await $app.workflow.OrderHandling.startProcess({ order: { number: $page.orderNumber, amount: $page.amount } });
$page.instanceId = res.id;When to prefer coaches: forms tightly coupled to the process data, fast iterations by the process team, reuse of the UI Toolkit; when to prefer applications: a portal-like UI across several processes / cases / data sources, a UX team owning the front end, or the same UI for Workflow and Workstreams. Both are supported side by side - a process app can have coaches for some tasks and application pages for others.
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