Types of users who interact with workflows

Assignees are users who own a task in a workflow. Assignees are defined per stage. There can be many assignees at a time for a task and different ones throughout a workflow process. Assignees view and find their assignments on the dashboard and My Tasks tab. If the assignee for a stage is a user group, the task is displayed on the dashboard or My Tasks tab for all users in the group. Any user in the group can pick up the task and complete it. Depending on how the workflow is configured, assignees can receive email notifications each time the stage changes and when a workflow ends. Assignees can also receive email reminders before, on, and after a stage due date.

Subscribers are users who have an interest in one or more stages of a workflow. For example, the owner of the parent object in a workflow can be designated as a subscriber. Subscribers are frequently set to fields on the related object. They do not own tasks but they can complete tasks, if they choose to. They can act as a backup for the assignees. Subscribers are defined per stage. There can be many subscribers at a time for a task and different ones throughout a workflow process. Subscribers can view work that they are subscribed to on the Subscription Tasks tab. Depending on how the workflow is configured, subscribers can receive email notifications each time the stage changes and when a workflow ends. Subscribers can also receive email reminders before, on, and after a stage due date.

An oversight user is someone who has overall responsibility for an area. Oversight users are defined per workflow. There can be none, one, or many oversight users for a workflow instance. Oversight users are ordinarily at a management level, for example, Division Leads. In a situation where there are multiple divisions, each Division Lead can track workload and tasks for their teams. At any time during a workflow, they can add information to a task or complete it, if they choose to. Depending on how the workflow is configured, oversight users receive email notifications when a workflow ends. Otherwise, they do not receive email notifications. They access the Oversight Tasks tab, which summarizes tasks generated for workflows for their area. The Oversight Tasks tab summarizes tasks for assignees under one oversight user. Oversight users can drill down to the workload for specific individuals. Oversight users do not normally approve work or get assigned tasks unless a stage in the workflow also makes them an assignee or subscriber. In this case, they can access the dashboard or the My Tasks tab to view work that is assigned to them. They can access the Subscription Tasks tab to view what they are subscribed to.