Background / Requirements:
I would like to understand the approaches for building the workflow solutions in Pega as a headless.
In short, the requirement is not to use Pega for the UI component and leverage Pega only for all of it’s Workflow and rule engine capabilities.
The key point to observe here is we are not building a BRE solution.
We are building a typical workflow solution which involves all of the features like processes, parent-child relationships, stages, case management, worklists, work baskets, Workgroups, SLA’s.

Solution Choice:

• The solution choice for building such a workflow application is –
  • Leverage Pega for all of the Workflow and rules engine capabilities
  • Build Micro-Services within Pega
  • UI in third party frameworks like Reactjs, Angularjs, etc

Questions and Feasibility:

In the traditional way, where all of the components (UI, processes, rules) are build in Pega, we create flow rules with assignments, flow actions. All the UI screens, flow actions to be specific, are associated with assignments. Typically, the Harness rule configured at the Assignment shape will be same for all of the assignments in the flow. This Harness rule will have a dynamic container (pyFlowActionArea) which is responsible for showing the appropriate UI screen for the end user to take the relevant action and proceed further on the flow.

I have the below questions when we have to separate UI from Pega –

1. Can we still make use of work objects, build flows with assignments, link flow actions to assignments?
2. If Yes, how do we link UI or screens built in the third party frameworks with the Process flows and assignments in Pega? If we do not build flow rules within Pega, then how do we maintain the state / stages of the objects and how can we achieve the workflow functionalities? At what level the micro-services need to be build?(work object level or assignment level or flow action level)?
3. Where does the sequence logic of displaying the appropriate UI screens in the third party UI frameworks reside? For instance, Pega displays the appropriate flow action with the highest likelihood at the assignment.
4. Can the Pega authorization component be exposed with this micro services approach or should the authorization be completely outside of Pega?

Finally, has any one implemented or aware of such implementation?