Many OnBase administrators and developers use Studio daily but find themselves clicking through the same workflows, troubleshooting blind spots, and hunting for configuration details.
To bring clarity to the space, Principal Consultant Cailen Myers will share insider techniques for getting the most out of OnBase Studio.
In this session, Cailen will walk through practical ways to streamline workflow design and maintenance processes. You’ll see how to improve troubleshooting efficiency, compare environments, and better understand the differences between Unity and Web Client issues. Session attendees will see how to:
• Reduce unnecessary clicks and save time while troubleshooting within Studio
• Access and interpret key properties information in the Lifecycle tab
• Create simple user and admin guides to document workflows and configurations
• Identify and compare rules, actions, and categories
Whether you’re a new OnBase Studio user or an experienced admin looking to refine your approach, this session will set you up for greater use in 2026.
Transcript
Cailen Myers
Hello everyone, and welcome to today’s webinar on year-end tips for OnBase Studio workflow. My name is Cailen Myers and I am a principal consultant for RPI Consultants. We’re thrilled to have you here with us today. Over the next 30 minutes, we’ll walk through how to improve troubleshooting efficiencies, compare environments, and better understand the difference between troubleshooting your Unity client and web client issues. Whether you’re new to OnBase Studio or you’re an experienced admin looking to refine your approach, please feel free to type any questions throughout this presentation in the chat box and we’ll either answer them at the end or follow up with you.
For the agenda today, we’ll walk through practical ways to streamline your workflow design and maintenance processes. You’ll see how to improve troubleshooting efficiencies, compare environments, and better understand the differences between your OnBase Unity and web client issues. We’ll start with an overview of OnBase Studio for those who may not be as familiar with it. We’ll then cover helpful tips and tricks for workflow — including reducing the number of clicks when troubleshooting, viewing property information within your lifecycle tab, creating user and admin guides, comparing environments, and filtering actions and rules by module or category. After tips and tricks, we’ll move into troubleshooting issues within OnBase Studio, understanding whether an issue is specific to the web client or the Unity client, and adding configuration for issue detection. We’ll then review some new features before moving into Q&A.
For our overview of OnBase Studio: OnBase Studio provides an intuitive interface for configuring several OnBase modules, including Workflow and WorkView, just to name a few. You can establish connections to repositories via direct connections or through the application servers. Studio provides a straightforward interface for importing and exporting configurations, and several display options that allow you to control your configuration experience. I always say there’s more than one way to do something in OnBase. The configuration options available in Studio do depend on your system licenses, so keep that in mind as we go through today’s presentation. Without further ado, let’s jump right in.
I’ve already logged into OnBase Studio so we didn’t have to wait for all the repositories to refresh. Let’s talk about helpful tips and tricks. The first thing I want to cover is naming conventions — strongly recommended for easier troubleshooting and understanding of your workflows and lifecycles. I have one lifecycle already checked out that I was using to configure some historical documents. You’ll notice in the system work that I have a rule starting with the word DOC, which tells me this rule is acting on a document. In another queue — a timer, for example — I have a rule starting with KW, which stands for keyword. Looking at the rule type in the property panel, you can see it’s under the keyword category. It’s a nice visual cue: whatever prefix I use on my rule or action matches the rule type category in the property panel.
Same idea for documents — prefix with DOC. For something related to a property, you might use PROP, and then the rest of the name should describe what that rule or action is doing. This is a best practice that many OnBase consultants use when configuring workflows, and something I highly recommend.
The next tip: when you have a rule or action selected, you can see its type in the property panel — for example, Check Keyword Value. But you can actually display that type name inline when expanding rules in the lifecycle. To enable this, go to File > Studio Options > Workflow tab and check the box to display action, rule, or event type names. This is a really nice visual shortcut — you don’t have to navigate back and forth to the property panel to understand how a rule is configured.
While we’re in Studio Options, I also want to call out the Action Rule Categories option. This lets you display only the rules, actions, and events for specific modules or categories. Maybe you’re building a process for accounts payable only — you can deselect everything and select only the accounts payable category. Note that this does require a system restart to take effect. Once applied, when you go to create a new action or rule, your rule types, action types, and event types will only show items relevant to that category. It’s a great way to simplify the experience, especially if you’re less familiar with workflow and don’t want to scroll through a long list to find what you need. Just remember to close and reopen OnBase Studio for the change to apply.
Now let’s talk about creating user and admin guides. I get asked frequently to create documentation explaining what I configured in the system — for a new OnBase admin or for end users. Instead of starting from scratch, you can right-click on a lifecycle in OnBase Studio and select Create Documentation. You’ll have two options: admin guide or user guide. Let’s start with the admin guide. After selecting it and clicking Next, you choose which lifecycles to include in the guide.
My historical drawings lifecycle is fairly small, but some lifecycles can get quite large. I recommend creating the guide for only one lifecycle or one process at a time, especially if you have multiple lifecycles that are tied together. The reason: if you try to generate a guide for every lifecycle in your OnBase Studio at once, the report will close OnBase Studio before it finishes. So keep it to one at a time.
After selecting the lifecycles and clicking Next, you can provide a solution name. If you have any user forms attached to this lifecycle, you can provide the location of those forms so they get pulled in as well. On the next screen, you can save the guide to a network location — highly recommended so it’s always accessible. You can also save it directly to OnBase if you have a document type set up for admin or workflow guides. And you can choose to have OnBase display the report immediately after generation. I’ll select my save location, check the display option, and hit Finish.
Since I already created one of these reports earlier, it’s going to ask me to confirm overwriting the existing file — that’s fine. It does take a moment to generate, which is another reason to limit it to a few lifecycles at a time. The report opens as a Word document. You’ll see the guide name I provided, the type — Workflow Admin Guide — and then all the configuration detail as you scroll through. The table of contents doesn’t populate automatically, so just click Update Table once it’s open. The report covers document type groups associated with the lifecycle, document types, custom queries, workflow filters, eForms, and more. It’s a really nice way to export your workflow configuration and keep it on file for reference or auditing.
Let me close this report. The same process applies to the user guide — right-click, Create Documentation, select User Guide, next, choose your lifecycles, provide a name, configure save options, and finish. The user guide looks very similar to the admin guide, but it’s oriented toward end users. A few things I want to call out: creating rules and actions with meaningful names, adding help text, and adding documentation within the lifecycle makes these generated guides significantly more valuable. You’ll see that where I added documentation, the guide shows useful descriptions of what things are doing. Where I stopped adding documentation, you get a very basic, less useful report. The information that gets pulled in comes directly from the lifecycle — from the help text field, the documentation text field, and the transitions you’ve built out. Those transitions are what generate the workflow diagram showing where documents move through the lifecycle.
There’s also a Configuration Report option when you right-click on a lifecycle. This one is primarily for OnBase admins. It has the same general save options as the other reports, plus an Options tab where you can specify what to include — user groups, item documentation, and so on. The defaults are already selected, but you can customize what’s included. For those of you who do change control or change management, this report is really useful to attach to change control requests. It documents exactly what you configured and what the settings are. It may not replace additional documentation entirely, but it gives you a solid starting point.
Now let’s talk about troubleshooting within OnBase Studio. I’ll close the main window to keep my screen clean. When troubleshooting, being able to see the different types is helpful — but so is being able to see errors directly. I’ll go to my Workflow Doctor and run Validate on my historical drawings queue. You’ll see it came back with an error — shown in red — and a warning — shown in yellow. OnBase is also visually marking the problematic item with a red underline, so I can see exactly where the issue is in the lifecycle. I can also double-click the error in the Workflow Doctor to jump directly to that location.
I created this error intentionally. This action is erroring because nothing is configured in the property panel — the type shows as None, which means there’s no rule type assigned. The warning, on the other hand, is just telling me that an action is currently disabled. It’s not a breaking issue — just a heads-up that something isn’t active. Both the description and the double-click navigation are there to help you work through these quickly.
How do you enable that red underline? Go to File > Studio Options > Doctor. The third checkbox in the General section is Underline Repository Items with Issues — check that to get the visual underline on your lifecycle items. While you’re in there, there are a number of other options worth noting. Enabling Doctor Validation requires a restart if it’s not already on — this is what allows you to use the Workflow Doctor tab to validate lifecycles. You can also configure it to validate automatically when a repository opens. A lot of organizations have this turned on from the start, though I personally keep the Workflow Doctor minimized and only open it when I’m actively configuring or modifying something. You can also set it to validate on repository refresh, on portfolio changes, and to highlight errors directly in the property panel. That last option will visually flag a disabled or erroring item in the property panel itself, so you don’t have to hunt for it.
Lastly, how do you know whether an issue is specific to the web client, the Unity client, or both? I work with a lot of organizations that only use one or the other. If you’re one of those, you can uncheck the client you don’t use in the Doctor settings. That way, if something would only be an error in the Unity client — because the Unity client doesn’t support a particular feature or won’t display it correctly — you won’t see that error warning at all, since you’re not using the Unity client. Uncheck it, hit OK, and from that point on, the Workflow Doctor will only surface errors relevant to the client you actually use.
Now I want to talk about a newer feature: OnBase App Builder. If you’re on a recent version of OnBase, you may notice an App Builder tab in your repository panel, as well as in the top menu. OnBase App Builder allows administrators to reimagine the OnBase user experience. End users can access OnBase through a tailored web interface designed specifically for their work. I recently worked with an organization that didn’t want their users logging into the Unity client or the web client and clicking around trying to find the right custom query. Instead, we built an app that takes them directly to that one custom query. They enter their search criteria, find the documents they need, and that’s it — no extra navigation.
That’s just one example. You can build App Builder experiences for custom queries, workflows, retrievals, and imports. You can tailor them by role — something different for accounts payable versus HR, for example. It gives users quick access to exactly what they need and nothing they don’t. In the OnBase Unity client, there are a lot of tabs at the top that many users never use. App Builder lets you streamline that experience so users only see what they’re licensed for and actually need. And it’s completely customizable — you’re designing the screen for the user the way you want it, or the way they want it.
Hopefully those tips, tricks, and troubleshooting techniques for OnBase Studio were helpful. One more thing I want to call out: when navigating through workflow queues with multiple levels, don’t forget you can right-click on a queue and select Expand All to open everything at once. And if you’ve expanded too much, Collapse All is right there as well. Much easier than clicking through each level individually.
Let’s move into the Q&A. We have a few questions that came in, so I’ll go through those now. If you have additional questions, please type them in — if we run out of time, we’ll follow up by email.
First question: what licenses do you need for App Builder? The great news is that OnBase App Builder itself does not require any additional licenses. You do need licenses for the specific modules you want to use within your apps — custom queries, retrievals, workflow, imports, and so on — but the App Builder itself is license-free. You can build apps using any of the modules you’re already licensed for.
Second question: do you need OnBase 25.1 for all the features we covered today? No, you don’t. Most of the features we went over today have been available since OnBase 16, possibly even earlier. The only exception is OnBase App Builder, which requires OnBase 24.1 or higher. If you’re interested in building those tailored user interfaces, I’d recommend upgrading to 24.1 or higher — which is a good idea regardless, since Hyland is expected to release a new version within the next couple of months. You generally want to stay on the latest version or no more than one or two versions behind.
Third question: are all these features available for both on-premises and cloud-hosted clients? Yes — everything we covered today is available for both on-prem and cloud-hosted OnBase solutions. If you are cloud-hosted and on 24.1 but don’t see the App Builder tab, you may need to work with Hyland Tech Support to get it enabled in your environment. Other than that, all of these features and functions are available regardless of where your OnBase environment is hosted.
Last question: are these the only tools available for troubleshooting? Absolutely not. There are many tools and approaches available depending on the issue. These include the Diagnostics Console within the OnBase Unity client, a standalone Diagnostics Console typically installed on your application or web servers — if you’re cloud-hosted, you can access it through your cloud portal — and tools like Process Monitor, Fiddler, and Event Viewer. There are a lot of ways to diagnose different issues in your OnBase environment.
If there are any questions we didn’t get to, we will follow up by email. Feel free to send any additional questions, or if you’re looking for a personalized demo, reach out to us at questions@rpic.com. Thank you all for joining us today — I hope you have a great day.
RPI is not affiliated with or an authorized partner of Hyland
