Workflow Manager Overview
What is Workflow Manager?
Workflow Manager is a visual editor for designing and running structured research workflows. You compose a workflow by connecting nodes on a graphical canvas — each node represents a step in your process, like filling out a form, capturing measurements, or grouping related actions together. The resulting graph describes what should happen and in what order; downstream systems (like lab automation hardware) handle the actual execution.
Behind the scenes, every workflow is saved as a specification identified by a unique ID, so the structure you build is a stable, shareable artifact that other Carta systems can read and act on.
⚠️ Note: Workflow Manager was previously called Workflow Builder. Older notes, Confluence pages, and some external communications still use the old name. They refer to the same tool.
Templates and Instances
A template captures the structure of a process — the steps, the order, and what kind of form fills each step. An instance is one real run of that process with actual data. You build a template once and instantiate it whenever you start a new experiment that follows the same protocol.
- A template is a reusable blueprint — the steps are defined, but no data has been entered yet.
- An instance is one concrete execution — the same graph shape, with each step filled in by actual form submissions as the experiment progresses.
Nodes and Their Types
Workflow Manager has two node types:
- Schema nodes (
schema) — a step waiting to be filled. The node references a form schema, but no form has been submitted at it yet. - Form nodes (
form) — a step that has been filled in. The node references a submitted form.
When you build a template, you mostly work with schema nodes. Occasionally a template will include a form node directly — for example, a powder batch record that is the same for every run of a protocol. In that case the template references the specific submitted form rather than leaving the step as an unfilled schema placeholder. When you instantiate the template and submit a form at a schema node, that node transitions to a form node — now pointing at the concrete record that was just created.
Active and Inactive Nodes
A node can be active (part of the current execution path) or inactive (context only — visible in the graph for lineage purposes, but not run as part of the workflow). Inactive nodes are how Workflow Manager shows you the bigger picture around a focused slice of work.
How It Helps You
- Capture your experimental process as a structured graph instead of in scattered notes or notebooks.
- Reuse protocols across multiple runs — change the data, keep the structure.
- Hand off to automation — workflows can be picked up by external systems and used to drive equipment without you re-keying anything.
- Trace lineage by following the graph from one sample or step to the next.
How It Helps the Team
- Principal investigators can see the structure of every experiment across the project at a glance.
- New team members can follow an established template instead of reinventing each protocol from scratch.
- Data scientists can query the workflow graph to recover upstream and downstream context for any sample or result.
How It Fits in the Platform
- Form Builder is where you create and edit the schemas that Workflow Manager nodes reference. If a step in your workflow needs a different set of fields, update the schema in Form Builder first.
- Collections is where researchers submit forms outside the workflow canvas — for example, entering a measured value after a part has been machined. Those submissions can appear as nodes inside a workflow instance.
See Collections Overview for the broader form-submission experience that Workflow Manager builds on.