When you were doing training or seeing a short presentation, they are showing the funcitonality but not showing a solution. It is common that we see the functionality but not solutions.

workflow (hence “wf”) is process-oriented and lifecycle (hence “lc”) is document oriented. The best way is to use example.

say, we have a loan document and we know loan doc will have few ‘states’.
1. Submited (submited by customer)
2. Initial Review (Review by loan officer)
3. Work In Progress (Befor being approved)
4. Approved
5. Archived (depends on gov regulations for achival)

Say customer can submit their loan electronically via website.

1. Customer fill in the forms.
2. customer click submit.
2.1 At this point in time, wf is initiated
2.2 The forms is attached to the workflow. First wf activity is to promote the document to “Submited” stage.
2.3 Wf sends email loan officer.

3. Loan office receives email in his/her inbox. He/she click the inbox task. Promote document to “Initial Review”
3.1 wf updates the wf status that the workitem as ‘acquired’.
3.2 –Loan officer review the docs (assuming there’s no rejection here).
3.3 loan officer approve by clicking the approve button in the task
3.4 wf send email to customer that the loan is now pre-approved
3.5 mark the activity as completed and send notification for the next
officer to prepare docs

4. Loan docs preparation officer picks up tasks. Promote document to Work in progress
4.1 Accept the tasks
4.2 –prepare docs
4.3 –scanned copy for archival
4.4 –mail out docs
4.5 click task complete button

5. Promote to “Approve”
5.1 Send email to customer that it is now approved.
5.2 request customer to sign docs

6. After 4 weeks, promote document to “archive”
6.1 Move document to Centera storage for rentention and archival.

note that the major steps are the process, and you noticed that there is a flow. There steps is workflow activities. Activities can either be manual or auto and auto activity can either be dctm OOTB method or customised method.