A workflow for a live optimization study automates all the actions required to interface the configuration management. Notice that metrics collection is an implicit action that does not need to be coded as part of the workflow.
More in detail, a typical workflow includes the following types of tasks:
Applying the configuration, by preparing and then applying the parameter configuration that has been recommended and/or approved to the target environment - this may require interfacing configuration management tools or pushing configuration to a repository
Depending on the complexity of the system, the workflow might be composed by multiple actions of the same type, each operating on separate components of the target system.
As expected, with respect to workflows for offline optimization studies, there are no actions to apply synthetic workloads as part of a load-testing scenario.