Activities are the elemental unit of a workflow. They are added to a workflow programmatically in a manner similar to adding XML DOM child nodes to a root node. When all the activities in a given flow path are finished running, the workflow instance is completed.

An activity can perform a single action, such as writing a value to a database, or it can be a composite activity and consist of a set of activities. Activities have two types of behavior: runtime and design time. The runtime behavior specifies the actions upon execution. The design-time behavior controls the appearance of the activity and its interaction while being displayed within the designer.

Windows Workflow Foundation contains a library of standard activities and provides the mechanisms for you to create your own. This enables extensibility and reusability between workflows.

For more information about standard activities, see Windows Workflow Foundation Activities. For information about creating new activities, see Developing Windows Workflow Foundation Activities.

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