Workflow Designer
When I joined the Workflow team at Collibra in 2022, workflows were already the backbone of the platform - powering everything from data governance automation to asset lifecycle management. Organisations used workflows to automate compliance checks, manage data lineage updates, handle asset approvals, and enforce governance policies across their data landscape. But here's what I discovered - while workflows were central to how the platform operated, creating and customising them was unnecessarily complex. Data stewards and governance teams knew exactly what processes they needed to automate, but translating that knowledge into working workflows required either deep technical skills or lengthy development cycles.
The platform came with powerful out-of-the-box workflows for common use cases like approval workflows, but organisations inevitably needed to customise these for their specific governance requirements. A data steward might want to modify this workflow to include additional validation steps, or adapt a compliance workflow to match their organisation's specific policies.
What I observed was frustrating - users would either try to modify our existing workflows for their needs or attempt to create new automation workflows from scratch, but in both cases they'd hit technical complexity walls and often just revert to manual processes. Meanwhile, these same teams were sitting on dozens of governance processes that could be automated if the tools just got out of their way.
Problem statement.
Data governance teams had deep expertise in the processes that needed automation, but lacked the technical skills to customise existing workflows or create new ones to match their organisation's specific requirements.
Challenges.
Making workflow creation and customisation accessible to data governance teams without sacrificing the power that technical users needed wasn't just about building a prettier interface - we needed to democratise access to the platform's core automation capabilities.
The challenge had multiple dimensions:
Technical complexity - Our existing workflow tools required scripting knowledge for any meaningful customization or new workflow creation
Creation barriers and customisation barriers - Teams wanted to build entirely new workflows for their unique governance processes and take existing workflows and adapt them to their specific governance needs
Migration complexity - We had a library of powerful existing workflows that needed to be accessible in the new designer
Confidence gap - Users had no way to see what they were building until after they'd built it
The solution needed to let data governance professionals focus on their policy logic rather than fighting with technical implementation details, while ensuring they could both create new workflows from scratch and easily customize our existing workflow library for their needs.
Building Workflow Designer - three pillars of success
First - WFD- a drag-and-drop low-code editor seamlessly integrated with Collibra platform
Instead of forcing governance teams to think in technical terms, we created Workflow Designer - a visual workflow editor that's seamlessly integrated within the Collibra platform. This drag-and-drop interface let teams map out their governance flows - approval chains, validation steps, notification logic - with minimal coding required.
The seamless integration meant the designer automatically followed Collibra's existing rules, user groups, and permissions. Users could build workflows that respected their organization's governance structure without having to manually configure security or user access - the designer inherited all of that from the platform.
Most importantly, the integration enabled seamless deployment. Once a workflow was built and tested in the designer, it could be deployed directly back into Collibra with one click, automatically becoming part of the platform's governance processes without any manual configuration or technical setup.
Second - implemented Real-Time preview for forms
Forms are a critical part of most governance workflows - data entry forms, approval forms, validation checklists. But users were building these forms blindly, with no way to see how they'd actually behave until after deployment.
We made real-time form preview a core feature. As users built their forms - adding fields, setting validation rules, configuring dependencies - they could instantly see exactly how the form would look and behave. This wasn't just a visual preview; it was a fully functional simulation that let them test field validation, conditional logic, and user interactions in real-time.
This eliminated the fear factor that was stopping teams from attempting workflow automation. When you can see and test exactly what you're building as you build it, you gain the confidence to tackle more complex automation projects.
Third - migration of existing out-of-the-box workflows to enable easy customisation and transition
One of the most strategic decisions was migrating our existing workflow library to the new Workflow Designer format. We had dozens of battle-tested workflows for common data governance scenarios - asset lifecycle management, compliance reporting, data quality validation - but they were locked in the old system.
Rather than forcing users to rebuild these from scratch, we systematically migrated each workflow to the new visual format. This meant a data governance team could start with any proven existing workflow, then easily customise it to include their organisation's specific approval chains or notification requirements.
The migration wasn't just a technical conversion - we redesigned each workflow to be more modular and customisable. Teams could now take our approval workflow as a starting point, add their specific validation steps, modify the notification logic, and deploy their customised version without writing any code.
Challenges and solutions on the journey.
Building Workflow Designer wasn't just about creating new features - we faced significant technical and product challenges that required careful solutions.
Backward compatibility: We couldn't break existing workflows that organisations depended on for critical governance processes. This meant designing a migration path that preserved functionality while enabling new capabilities. We had to ensure that workflows built in the old system continued to work exactly as before, while gradually moving them to the new designer format without disrupting operations.
Versioning became complex: When multiple team members could now modify workflows, we needed robust version control that didn't exist in the original system. We had to build versioning capabilities that let teams track changes, revert to previous versions, and manage collaborative editing without breaking live governance processes. We solved this by implementing clear identification of which version was actually deployed back to Collibra, so teams always knew exactly what was running in production versus what they were developing or testing in the designer.
Complete no-code wasn’t technically feasible at the time: While we wanted to eliminate coding entirely, the complexity of enterprise governance workflows meant some scripting was still necessary - particularly for form validation logic and complex automation scenarios that couldn't be handled through visual interfaces. We had to balance accessibility with power, creating a low-code solution that handled most use cases visually while still allowing technical users to add custom scripts when needed. This led to an idea in our backlog for future versions of Workflow Designer: having the tool suggest script solutions for common validation patterns and potentially help with debugging script issues, further reducing the technical barriers for governance teams.
As a team, we built Workflow Designer - a low-code visual editor that democratized access to Collibra's automation capabilities. The tool seamlessly integrated within the platform, automatically inheriting user permissions and governance rules while enabling one-click deployment back to Collibra.
Data governance teams could finally create and customize workflows using drag-and-drop interfaces with minimal coding, focusing on their governance logic rather than technical implementation. Real-time preview functionality allowed users to see and test their forms and workflows as they built them, eliminating the uncertainty that previously prevented teams from attempting automation projects. We migrated our existing workflow library to the new designer format, giving teams proven starting points they could adapt to their specific requirements. The result was a tool that made workflow automation accessible to domain experts while maintaining the full power and integration capabilities of the Collibra platform, enabling organizations to finally automate the governance processes they understood best.
Final product.
Outcome
56% reduction in manual effort - Workflows that used to take weeks of back-and-forth could be built and deployed in days. Business teams got weeks of their time back.
60% faster time to value - the combination of visual editing, real-time preview, and one-click deployment compressed the entire workflow creation cycle.
But the result I'm most proud of isn't quantifiable: data governance teams stopped avoiding workflow customization. Instead of working around our existing workflows, they started treating them as building blocks for their specific governance requirements.
Additional technical details about the Workflow Designer functionality are available in Collibra's public documentation.