Unicorn Sync removing workflow states from roles

Question

After every Unicorn sync in Sitecore 10.2, I am experiencing Workflow states assigned to a specific role going away and needing to be re-assigned. Is that normal or is there a way to keep the workflow states assigned and items still in Unicorn?

1. The item template that is using the workflow has a Standard Values item that holds the reference to the workflow (The template and standard values are in Unicorn)
2. The Default workflow selected I believe is based on item ID, but I am newer to Sitecore so I could be wrong on that and not by the name of the workflow item (if by name I would think I could remove the workflow from serialization to fix this), but I wasn't sure so it made sense to put the workflow also in serialization (if based on item id of the workflow)
3. Then I have a user role that is assigned to the workflow to have access to use it's actions

But, now when Unicorn syncs it is removing these assigned states on every sync. Is there a way to keep role assignments while still keeping the items in Unicorn?

Answer 1

It's completely normal. I think the issue might be in how you're using the tool.

Here's what Sync does:

• Takes anything you've previously Serialized to disk and makes sure the current item state reflects that. So if you've serialized the items without any workflow on then, that's what they will revert to.

• Serialize takes everything covered by your configuration predicated and writes it to disk. Assuming you've configured the Unicorn DataProvider, you would only need to run this on any new configurations you establish.

So the question becomes; what are you running Sync for? More specifically why would you expect Sync to NOT touch the items in question?