Technologies are described herein for modeling business processes that facilitate the collaborative submission of data in a WFM system by modeling business processes in terms of cycles and assignments. A cycle defines a scenario for the business process along with a window of time in which the business process should be executed. Assignments are work activities that are defined within each cycle. A cycle definition is created for each business cycle within a business process. Each cycle definition includes data defining a recurrence pattern for the business cycle and data defining a time period in which one or more contributors to the business cycle may contribute data. Each cycle definition also includes one or more assignment definitions that define the scope, contributors, approvers, validation rules, deadlines, and data forms that should be used for the assignment.