Secondary Workflows – Kuali

Secondary workflows allow you to run additional processes—like reviews, notifications, or integrations—alongside your main submission workflow, without impacting the document’s primary workflow status. Trigger workflows manually from a document or automatically on save (based on certain criteria)—without changing the document’s main workflow status.

As an app administrator, you can create, manage, and trigger these workflows to support more flexible business processes.

When to Use Secondary Workflows

Use secondary workflows when you need to:

Trigger reviews or approvals outside of the primary submission process.
Send notifications or run integrations at key points in a document’s lifecycle.
Support parallel business processes without adding complexity to your primary workflow.
Send reminders or notifications before or after important dates.
Automatically trigger actions on a specific date or recurring schedule.
Create recurring processes that run daily, weekly, or monthly.
Schedule multiple reminders for the same event, such as 90, 60, and 30 days before an expiration date.

Create a Secondary Workflow

To create a Secondary Workflow:

Go to the Workflow tab in your form (which defaults to the Primary workflow view), then click the dropdown in the top left to open the Manage Workflows page.
Within Manage Workflows, you can create, manage, enable, or disable your secondary workflows. Using the three-dot menu for each workflow, you can also Publish, Rename, or Duplicate the workflow.
Click on +New Workflow (or edit and existing from the 3 dot menu) - name the workflow and select what will trigger this workflow (either manually or if the document is saved with certain criteria):

Types of Triggers:

A manual trigger - Starts a workflow only when a user manually initiates it.
A change to a document - Starts a workflow automatically when a document is created, updated, or meets configured field conditions.
A specific date or interval - Starts a workflow automatically based on a date from the form or on a specific date and then you can configure how often it should execute based on that date.
If you select A change to a document or A specific date or interval as the trigger type, your workflow will begin with a Trigger step. In this step, you can define which documents are eligible for the workflow and configure the field changes, dates, or schedules that will trigger it. These workflows run automatically when a document is saved and meets the configured criteria, or when the scheduled date criteria are met. You can switch between Manual, A change to a document, and A specific date or interval trigger types at any time. Once your trigger is configured, continue building your workflow with the desired steps (see Creating a Workflow for more information).

Note: The 'Limit this workflow to a single execution across all versions of a document' configuration option allows you to limit the trigger to the first time someone saves and that attribute trigger exists; and it won't send again on every subsequent save.
When ready you can validate the secondary workflow using the Workflow Simulator by selecting an existing document to test against or by completing a new document. Please note, that secondary workflows based on a specific date or interval can be previewed in test mode but the exact logic cannot be tested in the simulator.
Once validated, Publish the draft secondary workflow to make it live for automatic on-save actions or available for app and product administrators to manually trigger from a document.

Note: If a workflow is updated, in-progress executions will continue using the version they started with. New runs will use the latest published version.

Configuring a Manual Trigger

Manual triggers are useful for processes that happen on demand, such as requesting an additional review, launching an ad hoc approval process, or running a one-time integration.

To Configure a Manual Trigger

From Manage Workflows, click + New Workflow.
Enter a name for the workflow.
Select A manual trigger as the workflow type.
Build the workflow by adding the desired steps, such as approvals, tasks, notifications, acknowledgements, or integrations.
Use the Workflow Simulator to test the workflow against a new or existing document.
Publish the workflow when it is ready.

Running a Manual Workflow

Once published, app and product administrators can manually start the workflow from the document's action menu in the Document List.

The workflow runs independently of the document's primary workflow and creates its own workflow history and status tracking.

You can then run that manual workflow in a document via the following instructions:

As an app or form administrator, open a document from the Document List.
Click the menu (⋯) in the top right of the document.
Select Run Manual Workflow; select the desired workflow and click Run:

Configuring Trigger Based on A Change to a Document

Choose A change to a document when you want a secondary workflow to run automatically when a document is saved and meets specific criteria.

This option is useful for sending notifications, triggering integrations, routing additional reviews, or responding to changes in document data without modifying your primary workflow.

Add Trigger Criteria

When you select A change to a document, the workflow begins with a Trigger step.

Use this step to define the conditions that determine when the workflow should run. Trigger criteria use the same rule options available in the Branch workflow step, allowing you to build rules based on document data, field values, statuses, and other conditions.

Note: The 'Limit this workflow to a single execution across all versions of a document' configuration option allows you to limit the trigger to the first time someone saves and that attribute trigger exists; and it won't send again on every subsequent save.

Complete and Publish the Workflow

After configuring the trigger:

Add the workflow steps you want to occur when the trigger conditions are met.
Test the workflow using the Workflow Simulator with a new or existing document.
Publish the workflow to make it active.

Once published, the workflow will automatically run whenever a document is saved and meets the configured trigger criteria.

Configuring Trigger Based on a Specific Date or Interval

When you select A specific date or interval, the workflow begins with a Trigger step. Use this step to define which documents the workflow should run against and when it should execute.

Secondary Workflow Trigger Step

You can also choose whether the workflow evaluates against:

The latest version of a document
The latest completed version of a document

Choose a Schedule

Scheduled workflows can be configured to run based on a date stored in the form or on a fixed date.

Based on a Date from the Form

Select Based on a date from the form, then choose the date field you want to use. Configure the workflow to run before or after the selected date and specify how many days, weeks, or months should be used as the offset.

Common examples include:

30 days before an expiration date
7 days after a submission date
Multiple reminder schedules, such as 90, 60, and 30 days before an expiration date

You can click + Add Configuration to create additional schedules for the same workflow.

On a Specific Date

Select On a specific date to schedule the workflow based on a fixed date rather than a form field.

Set the Execution Frequency

Choose whether the workflow should run:

One-time – Runs only on the selected date.
Every – Runs on a recurring schedule.

Recurring schedules can be configured to run every:

X days
X weeks
X months

The system automatically handles common scheduling scenarios. For example, a workflow scheduled for the first day of a month will continue running on the first day of future months. Likewise, a workflow scheduled for March 31 will run on the last day of months that have fewer than 31 days.

You can also configure when a recurring schedule should stop:

Never
On a specific date
After a set number of occurrences

Monitor Workflow Activity

View Workflow History

Open a document from the Document List.
Go to Workflow Status or Document History (depending on whether History is enabled in Form Settings).
Once a secondary workflow is triggered, you’ll see a dropdown in Workflow Status / Document History that lets you switch between workflows and review their individual histories.

Each step will indicate which workflow it belongs to, helping you track activity across processes.

Track Active Workflows

Use the Active Secondary Workflows column in the Document List.
Identify documents with workflows currently in progress or in an error state. Workflows in an error state will display a red status indicator icon.
You can also surface this metadata within a document if needed.

Important to Know

Secondary workflows do not change the main workflow status of a document
Multiple workflows can run at once, but the same workflow won’t run in parallel on the same document.
A document may have active workflows even if its main workflow is complete
To fully understand activity on a document, you may need to review both the main workflow status and any active secondary workflows via Workflow History.
A new Active Secondary Workflows column in the Document List helps you quickly identify which documents have workflows in progress.
Scheduled workflow processing runs daily at 5:00 AM Mountain Time. This timing ensures date-based calculations work correctly across all supported time zones, including Hawaii. For customers in Eastern Time, scheduled workflows will process at 7:00 AM ET.
Kuali automatically tracks and updates each document’s next scheduled workflow run date when documents change, workflows run, or new scheduled workflows are published.

Best Practices

Use secondary workflows to keep your primary workflow clean and focused
Test workflows against real documents before publishing
Clearly name workflows so admins can easily identify and trigger them
Monitor active workflows to catch errors or in-progress actions early