What are Roles and Participants, and how do they influence workflow design?

• A. Roles govern technical access to the system, while Participants are the people assigned to tasks; mapping ensures permissions are enforced.
• B. Roles and Participants are interchangeable terms describing the same concept.
• C. Roles and Participants are not related to workflow design.
• D. Participants determine the data source for each field in a contract.

Answer: (C)

Roles and Participants define who does what and when in a workflow. Roles are the job functions or positions that carry specific capabilities within the system—for example, who can sign, approve, review, or edit a document. Participants are the actual people or groups assigned to those roles for a given workflow instance. The design uses the mapping between roles and participants to route tasks to the right people and enforce who can perform each action. Designing around roles rather than individuals provides flexibility: you can reassign a role to a different person without changing the workflow structure, set up approvals and escalations based on roles, and ensure appropriate access and visibility for each step. This pairing shapes routing, approvals, escalations, and governance throughout the process.