There are also other more specific characteristics of workflow applications that differentiate them from other applications. Business processes that the application manages or models can take years to complete, so the application should be made in order to accommodate such time span in it. A workflow application should allow users monitoring and auditing of the process. The logical architecture that satisfies all the above requirements is fairly simple and consists of three basic components. So called application component performs business operations using existing applications, they exchange workflow relevant information with flow control component.
Workflow participants are individuals that themselves do work or input data.
Flow control component encapsulates business process data and manages flow context. The other two components interact and are controlled by flow control component. From the need of existence of abstracting a common architecture and formalizing interfaces between components of these components there has raised a need to have a standard for workflow management. Currently there are many standards that address different aspects of workflow management. The WfMC workflow reference model defines the basis of standards of workflow management applications.