Workflows
Build KYC onboarding flows with integrated AML screening. Orchestrate identity verification, liveness checks, dynamic questionnaires, and more in a single verification journey.
Workflows Overview
ComplyCube Workflows let you design and run complete, compliant KYC onboarding workflows with integrated AML screening.
They act as an end-to-end KYC onboarding workflow builder, orchestrating multiple verification checks within a single flow. This enables businesses to run consistent, audit-ready customer verification journeys across web, mobile, and other channels.
For example, a workflow might include ID document verification, biometric liveness detection, and AML screening. Each time you onboard a customer, a workflow session automatically runs the entire verification journey.
Workflows can also include Smart Forms (dynamic questionnaires) and Compliance Policies for automated decisioning, allowing you to guide customers through a complete verification journey from start to finish.
With ComplyCube, you can verify customers through Workflows or Direct Checks. We recommend Workflows for most use cases, particularly regulated onboarding flows.
Learn more about Workflows and Direct Checks →
If you're on a legacy plan, you may need to contact your Account Manager or support to enable Workflows.
Interactive guide
Benefits
Workflows make it easier to stay aligned with regulatory requirements. They offer a number of key benefits:
Faster setup: Launch quickly using ready-made templates tailored to your use case.
Low and no-code integrations: Integrate once through the Hosted Solution, SDKs, or API, and keep flows up to date without rework.
Flexible journey design: Add questionnaires (Smart Forms), dynamic flows, and eSignatures to tailor onboarding journeys to your compliance and business needs.
Policy-driven compliance: Compliance policies can be attached to workflows so that checks always meet the right regulatory framework (e.g., UK DIATF Right to Work, Singapore MAS, Germany BaFin, FATF) or your own custom requirements.
Future-proof: Add new verification steps or update policies without code changes.
Data protection by design: Collect only the data required for processing, ensuring GDPR and broader data privacy compliance.
Oversight and auditability: Monitor, review, and evidence entire customer journeys from one place.
Creating workflows
You can create complete workflows in seconds using the ComplyCube Portal. When starting a new workflow, you’ll be prompted to choose from a wide range of templates, each preconfigured with predefined steps and compliance policies aligned to common use cases and regulatory requirements.
You can customize a template during setup or build a workflow from scratch to suit your specific needs.
Designing workflows
The workflow designer is the tool for building verification journeys in ComplyCube.
You begin by selecting the verification checks required for your use case. From there, ComplyCube’s smart engine automatically assembles the necessary capture steps, ensuring customers are shown only the screens required to complete those checks.
All flows follow a privacy-by-design approach, so customers are only asked for the information required to complete the selected checks, avoiding any unnecessary data capture.
With the designer, you can:
Drag and drop checks to build a sequence.
Configure each verification step with separate Capture and Processing settings:
Capture: Defines the customer-facing experience, including inputs, documents, images, and journey steps.
Processing: Defines how the check runs, including evaluation rules, processing options, and other backend settings.
Preview workflows before publishing, so you can test the journey end-to-end, validate policy alignment, and ensure the customer experience is as intended.
This lets you focus on designing the right flow, while ComplyCube handles the underlying compliance and data minimization.
Workflow versions
When you create a workflow, its first version is generated automatically. Each time you update the workflow, a new version is created to preserve a full audit trail. Existing versions cannot be edited.
Version history lets you track every change over time and decide which version should be active.
New versions are created in an inactive state, giving you control over when to activate them. This allows you to safely test or review changes before they go live.
At any point, only one version of a workflow can be active.
Workflow statuses
Workflow statuses are manual settings on each workflow version. They don’t follow an automatic lifecycle. You can switch a version between Active and Inactive at any time.
Draft
The workflow is being created or modified and has not yet been published.
Inactive
A published workflow that has been disabled or superseded by a newer version.
Active
The current published version of the workflow that is available for use.
Workflow session
A workflow session is created each time a customer enters a workflow journey. Sessions capture the customer’s progress, results, and audit trail.
You can start sessions in several ways, depending on your integration approach:
Web Portal (by sending a verification link to your customer)
Hosted Solution
Mobile SDK
Web SDK
API
Session tracking
Workflow sessions can be monitored in real time through the ComplyCube Portal. The Portal provides full visibility into each customer’s verification journey, making it easy to track progress, identify issues, and manage outcomes.
When tracking sessions, you can:
View session details: Inspect customer progress, including completed stages, uploaded documents, and captured biometrics.
Monitor session status: See whether a session is started, processing, complete, abandoned, or cancelled.
Track in-progress verifications: Follow checks as they move from submission to completion, with status updates reflected instantly.
Identify drop-offs: Spot abandoned sessions to understand where customers are leaving the journey and improve the user experience.
Audit trails: Access timestamps and metadata for compliance and internal review.
Session lifecycle
A workflow session represents the customer’s progress through a verification journey. Each session moves through a defined lifecycle, with its status reflecting the customer’s activity and the processing state.
Started
The session has been initiated by the customer, and the verification flow is available to navigate. At this stage, no checks have started. If the customer exits the flow, refreshes the browser, or closes the app, they can later resume the session from where they left off.
Processing
The customer has finished the verification flow, and the captured data has been submitted. One or more verification checks are actively being processed. The session will remain in this state until all checks are complete.
Complete
All verification checks have finished, and the session is fully complete. Results are now available via the Portal, API and webhooks, and no further customer actions can be performed on the session.
Abandoned
The session was started but left incomplete for an extended period of time. Once abandoned, the session cannot be resumed and must be restarted if the client wishes to continue. Abandoned sessions are useful for tracking drop-offs and optimizing customer journeys.
Cancelled
The session was explicitly cancelled before completion, typically by an administrative action by you or a team member. A cancelled session cannot be resumed, and no further checks will be run.
Session results
Once a workflow session is completed, ComplyCube processes all of the verification checks and makes the results available in real time. These results include detailed outcomes for each check, overall workflow status, and a full audit trail.
You can apply conditional rules and post-processing rules to tailor session outcomes. Contact your Account Manager to enable or configure them.
The overall outcome of a workflow session is derived from its verification checks and policies. Outcomes update in real time as checks are processed or reviewed by your team.
All checks and policies return Clear
Clear
No issues detected.
Any check or policy returns Attention
Attention
Requires manual review.
Any check is returned as Not processed
Attention
Treated as Attention until resolved.
A check is Rejected (reviewer decision)
Rejected
Outcome of the session is set to Rejected.
Screening check confirmed as a sanction or watchlist match
Rejected
Outcome is Rejected once a match to a sanctioned entity or watchlist entry is reviewed and confirmed.
Screening check matches other types (e.g. PEP, adverse media)
Attention
Even when the match is reviewed and confirmed, the outcome remains Attention. The session outcome will only change if a team member explicitly overrides it.
Session outcome manually overridden by a team member
Clear
Attention
Rejected
Manual overrides always take precedence over automated outcomes and should be applied once all checks and policies have been reviewed.
You can access results in several ways:
Web Portal: View customer progress, verification outcomes, and supporting evidence directly in the Portal.
Webhooks: Receive results automatically as soon as a session is completed, enabling real-time decisioning in your systems.
API: Retrieve results programmatically for deeper integrations, reporting, or custom workflows.
Results are stored securely and can be exported as reports to support audits and regulatory reporting.
Compliance policies
Compliance policies are a core part of ComplyCube Workflows. They define the regulatory and business rules that must be applied to every verification journey, ensuring that each workflow session is compliant by design.
A workflow template will show any compliance policies assigned to it, and the corresponding evaluation results will appear in each workflow session. Not all templates will have policies attached.
By incorporating a policy into a workflow template, you remove the need to configure checks per jurisdiction.
A policy can reflect:
National standards such as UK DIATF Right to Work, Singapore MAS, or Germany BaFin.
International frameworks such as FATF guidance.
Custom business rules and corporate policies, allowing you to adapt workflows to your own risk and compliance requirements.
When a customer completes a verification flow that includes compliance policies, ComplyCube automatically evaluates each policy against the verification data. The results are then presented in the Policy Assurance section of the workflow session.
Dynamic workflows
Advanced dynamic workflows let you build adaptive KYC onboarding and identity verification journeys. Combine Smart Forms, check configuration, and verification processing rules to tailor each workflow session to the customer.
This helps you collect only the right data, run the right checks, and support more complex compliance requirements without rebuilding the full workflow.
Common use cases include:
Rule-based customer routing: Place customers into different verification journeys based on your own business or compliance rules.
Conditional data capture: Show additional questions, declarations, or supporting document requests only when the selected journey requires them.
Enhanced due diligence flows: Route higher-risk customers into more advanced onboarding and jurisdiction-specific verification paths.
Contact your Account Manager to enable or configure advanced dynamic workflow rules.
Monitoring performance
Workflows should evolve as regulations, fraud patterns, and customer expectations change.
ComplyCube provides built-in analytics to help you monitor performance and identify areas for improvement.
By analyzing metrics such as completion rates, abandonment rates, failure rates, and average verification time, you can understand how customers move through your verification journeys.
These insights allow you to:
Refine workflows to reduce friction.
Optimize check configurations to better match your target demographics.
Add or remove checks as risks evolve.
Improve decisioning speed.
Enhance customer experience.
Best practices
Designing workflows is about building journeys that are compliant, efficient, and easy to maintain. The following best practices will help you get the most out of ComplyCube Workflows:
Start with a template: Use pre-defined templates as your foundation, where possible. They reflect industry standards and compliance policies, saving you time and reducing the risk of missing key requirements.
Keep flows simple: Avoid unnecessary steps. Only include the checks relevant to your use case, which helps reduce friction for customers and speeds up completion.
Test before publishing: Preview and test workflows end-to-end to confirm the customer experience, policy alignment, and data capture settings are correct.
Manage versions carefully: Review each new version before activating it. This maintains a clear audit trail and ensures changes don’t disrupt ongoing onboarding journeys.
Automate with webhooks: Use webhooks to trigger downstream actions, such as account creation, case management, or alerts, as soon as verification results are available.
Frequently asked questions
When should I use Workflows instead of Direct Checks?
Use Workflows when you need a complete onboarding journey rather than a single standalone verification.
They are usually the better fit for regulated onboarding, multi-step KYC flows, and cases where you need policy-driven decisioning.
Use Direct Checks when you only need to run one check without the wider workflow layer.
What verification checks can I include in a workflow?
You can include any ComplyCube verification checks in a workflow.
Common examples include Document Check, Identity Check, AML Screening Check, Smart Forms, and Compliance Policies.
Can I customize a workflow for different countries or risk levels?
Yes.
You can create multiple workflows to fit different use cases, countries, or risk levels.
For more complex requirements, you can use dynamic workflows, conditional rules, and policy logic to route customers into different verification paths based on jurisdiction, risk profile, or use case.
How do workflow sessions work?
A workflow session is created each time a customer starts a workflow journey.
It tracks customer progress, captured data, verification results, and the audit trail for that journey.
Can customers resume an incomplete workflow?
Yes, while the session is still active.
A customer can resume a started session from where they left off.
Once a session becomes abandoned or cancelled, it cannot be resumed and must be restarted.
How are workflow results and decisions returned?
Workflow results are available in the Portal, through the API, and through webhooks.
This supports both manual review and real-time downstream decisioning.
Can I add compliance policies and questionnaires to a workflow?
Yes.
You can add Smart Forms to collect extra customer data and declarations, and Compliance Policies to apply rule-based evaluation inside the same journey.
Related topics
Smart Forms for KYC data capture and declarations.
Compliance Policies for policy evaluation and rule-based decisioning.