Scripts, assignment rules, business rules, workflows, escalations, and engines all take effect in relation to a database operation, such as insert or update. In many cases, the order of these events is important.

Note: Client-based code that executes in the browser, using Ajax or running as JavaScript, will always execute before the form submission to the server.
The order of execution is as follows:
  1. Before business rules: Scripts configured to execute before the database operation with an order less than 1000.
  2. Before engines. The following are not executed in any specific order:
    • Approval engine (for task and sys_approval_approver tables)
    • Assignment rules engine (for task tables)
    • Data policy engine
    • Escalation engine
    • Field normalization engine
    • Role engine - keeps role changes in sync with sys_user_has_role table (for sys_user, sys_user_group, sys_user_grmember, and sys_user_role tables)
    • Execution plan engine (for task tables)
    • Update version engine - creates version entry when sys_update_xml entry is written (for sys_update_xml table)
    • Data lookup engine inserts or updates
    • Workflow engine (for default workflows)
  3. Before business rules: Scripts configured to execute before the database operation with an order greater than or equal to 1000.
  4. The data base operation (insert, update, delete).
  5. After business rules: Scripts configured to execute after the database operation with an order less than 1000.
  6. After engines. The following are not executed in any specific order:
    • Label engine
    • Listener engine
    • Table notifications engine
    • Role engine - keeps role changes in sync with sys_user_has_role table (for sys_user, sys_user_group, sys_user_grmember and sys_user_role tables)
    • Text indexing engine
    • Update sync engine
    • Workflow engine (for deferred workflows)
    • Trigger engine (for all Flow Designer flows)
  7. Email notifications. The following are executed based on the weight of the notification record:
    • Notifications sent on an insert, update, or delete
    • Event-based notifications
  8. After business rules (Only active records). Scripts configured to execute after the database operation with an order greater than or equal to 1000.