In conceptual object workflow, all changes associated with any root level object move together as one transaction through the workflow approval process. Changes to objects that belong to the same root level parent are part of the same conceptual object transaction (which groups individual workflow transactions). In other words, if there is workflow pending on a parent record, a change to the child object is appended to the pending parent record. When a change is initiated to a root level object, the conceptual object workflow rule is always triggered. The entire transaction, parent and child records, are approved or rejected as a whole.

On the other hand, if a workflow transaction is pending for a child object, but there is no pending transaction for the root level parent, the Triggers Workflow? property (defined in the Workflow Rules tab of the object definition) determines whether a new workflow transaction is created. If a workflow rule is defined for both the parent and child object, the workflow rule defined for the conceptual object determines which rule is followed.

The workflow transactions corresponding to the updates performed to various attributes of a record are displayed as individual entries in the approval screen.Workflow rewind is available for conceptual object workflow transaction. For information about workflow rewind, see Workflow Rewind.