Workflow Forms

Several standard work item renderers are provided with IdentityIQ for presenting approvals or other data requests to users. These are written as JSF pages. It is possible to write custom forms in JSF, specifying the JSF page as the renderer for the approval. This is rarely done. Customers who want to use custom forms generally specify these through a Form object.

Forms are used in workflows to present data-gathering pages to a user and define data presentation for approval activities. In many cases, implementations rely on the standard approval work item forms for normal approval actions so do not need to implement custom forms for their approval steps, but they still might choose to use custom forms for non-approval data-gathering activities to which the normal approval forms do not apply. A custom form can be added to a workflow through the Business Process Editor (Setup > Business Processes) by right-clicking a step and choosing Add Form or by adding a form element to a step in the Workflow XML.

Whether the form is specified for an approval or a data-gathering activity, the form element must be embedded within an approval element in the XML. The user interface auto-creates it within an approval element. The workflow XML to specify a custom form looks like this

?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE SailPoint PUBLIC "sailpoint.dtd" "sailpoint.dtd">
<sailpoint>
<Workflow  explicitTransitions="true"  libraries="Identity"  name="Example Workflow" type="IdentityLifecycle">
...
  <Step name="Display Form">
     <Approval name="Please enter some data" owner="admin" return="selectedApprover" send="trace ">
       <Form>
        ...         <!-- Form content goes here -->
      </Form>
    </Approval>
  </Step>

A custom form can also be created as an independent form object, defined in a separate XML document and imported into IdentityIQ, visible through the console or the Debug pages by viewing the Form objects, and referenced in the approval element as an argument like this:

<Approval…>
     <Arg name='workItemForm' value='Custom Form Name'/>
      ...
 </Approval>

This option promotes form reuse across workflows. However, these independent form objects cannot be edited through the Business Process Editor like the embedded forms can.

Process Variable and Step Forms in Workflows

While forms added to steps on the Process Designer tab of the Business Process Editor are used to request data required by the process from a user, such as a value for a missing attribute, the process variable and step forms are used to define the information presented on the Basic Views of the Process Variables tab and the Arguments tab of the Step Editor.

These forms are created as an independent form object, defined in a separate XML document and imported into IdentityIQ. They are visible through the console or the Debug pages by viewing the Form objects.

The process variables forms are used to simplify the information displayed on the Process Variables tab by hiding those variables that are rarely, if ever, modified and displaying variables in more logical groups. Changes made in the Basic View are persisted to the Advanced View and more complex configuration can be performed there if needed.

The step forms are referenced from the workflows or stepLibraries. These forms define the form that is presented on the Arguments tab of the Step Editor panel and works similarly to the process variable forms.

Both of these forms are referenced from workflows using the configForm variable. The forms can be defined and viewed and edited on the IdentityIQ debug page.