The specific process I am working with had 8 different workflows to complete the process.  For example, one checks to see if a person was in custody at the time a medical bill was incurred.  One monitors our accounting software to see if the bill has been paid yet.  Each one has its own “job” to run at different time or different triggers but they all need to send email notifications.

Because the people receiving the emails can change based on the document metadata and half the emails will be to those outside our domain I have built a SQL table that stores the email addresses.  Instead of having all 8 workflows have redundant steps to call the table, I have it being done in one workflow with output parameters.

The other 7 workflows then invoke the email workflow to get those parameters.  When I need to use them I just use the token dialog box to pick the right output parameter.

When I add a new parameter to the email workflow, I have to open all 7 of the other workflows to update the parameter – even if I am not using the new parameter in that specific workflow.  For example, I might add in a new vendor to the original workflow.  But my workflow to check the payment status has nothing to do with the vendor emails.  So even though I don’t need to update anything (such as adding a new email task) I still have to open the workflow just to update the parameters.

I guess a better way of saying what I would like would be a convenience feature that when I publish the original workflow (with the output parameters), it would automatically look for any workflow that invokes the original workflow and “hits” the refresh parameters link on it’s own.

Hope this is a little clearer.  What I would hope to avoid is forgetting to refresh the parameters on one of the workflow then having it break or find an old version of the original workflow because I didn’t refresh them.