Workflow Timeline vs Events

Summary

Audit, timeline, domain events and integration events are separate artifacts with different audiences and lifecycles. They must not be treated as interchangeable records.

Artifact	Purpose	Typical data	Delivery/lifetime
Audit record	Compliance and support evidence	Actor, action, entity and details	Persisted query record
Timeline entry	Human-readable activity feed	Category, actor, description and metadata	Persisted query record
Domain event	Aggregate state-change intent	Strongly typed workflow/task facts	In-memory until save maps and clears it
Integration event	External message contract	Envelope plus workflow/task payload	Serialized into outbox for relay

Requires Confirmation

Retention, redaction, replay and user-facing wording policies for each record family require confirmation.

Source References

• microservices/src/workflow-service/Domain/Workflow/WorkflowInstance.cs
• microservices/src/workflow-service/Infrastructure/WorkflowDbContext.cs
• microservices/src/workflow-service/Infrastructure/Persistence.cs
• microservices/src/workflow-service/Messaging/WorkflowIntegrationEvents.cs

Related Articles

• Domain events
• Integration events
• Event source map

See Also

• Database documentation

Keywords

Workflow timeline, audit, domain events, integration events.

Revision Information

• Status: Draft
• Last reviewed: 2026-07-20
• Next review: 2026-10-20