Run Initiator Role
Some steps belong to whoever started the work, and you cannot know who that will be when you are writing the workflow. The Initiator role solves exactly that: it resolves, in each run, to the person who created that run.
Use it
Assign a workflow step to the Initiator role in the workflow editor, the same way you would assign to any other role. Every run then gives that step to whoever started it.
How it differs from a normal role
Initiator is built in and behaves differently from the roles you create:
- It has no list of people. There is nobody to add, because it is resolved per run.
- Its name cannot be changed.
- It needs no decision at run creation, unlike your own roles, which ask who fills them.
What it is good for
The opening steps of a request-driven process: whoever raised the request gathers the details, confirms the requirements, chases the requester. Assigning those to a named person means everything funnels through one person who did not raise any of it.
It also works well for the closing step, the "tell the person who asked that it is done" step that belongs to whoever started it.
Worth knowing
The initiator is the person who created the run, which for a scheduled recurring run is not a person at all in the usual sense. Check how initiator steps resolve on a scheduled workflow before relying on them there.
Once a run exists, its initiator steps are ordinary assignments and can be handed to somebody else like any other. See Assigning steps in a run.
Video walkthrough
This video walks through the Initiator role.