1. Copyright © 2006 Pilothouse Consulting Inc. All rights reserved. Workflow Development Overview Architecture Requirements Types of workflows Stages of workflow Supported WF and SharePoint specific activities Sample code Forms Workflow definition schema Development of simple sequential workflow and deployment Workflow API

2. Copyright © 2006 Pilothouse Consulting Inc. All rights reserved. Architecture Workflow functionality in WSS is built on top of Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) - a platform for workflow development that includes tools, templates, and execution engine (runtime). WSS hosts WF runtime engine. WF runtime provides services that every workflow application needs Sequencing State management Transaction support Tracing capabilities

3. Copyright © 2006 Pilothouse Consulting Inc. All rights reserved. Requirements Developers use Visual Studio 2005 Designer for Windows Workflow Foundation to create new workflows. There are two packages that need to be installed: 1.Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Windows Workflow Foundation 2.Enterprise Content Management Starter Toolkit – provides SharePoint specific templates

4. Copyright © 2006 Pilothouse Consulting Inc. All rights reserved. Advantages of using VS 2005 over SharePoint Designer Can use any form technology Can associate a workflow with a content type Can author custom activities Can include workflow modifications

5. Copyright © 2006 Pilothouse Consulting Inc. All rights reserved. Types of Workflows Sequential workflow represents a set of activities that execute in order until the last activity completes State Machine workflow represents set of states, transitions, and actions. Workflow begins at the start state and ends at the final state

6. Copyright © 2006 Pilothouse Consulting Inc. All rights reserved. Stages of Workflow Association administrator associates the workflow template with list, document library, or content type. No workflow instances are created. Initiation a user with permissions can start a workflow which creates a new workflow instance for the specific item. Status users can view progress of the workflow. Task Completion users can check the tasks list to see which tasks have been completed. When users update tasks, the workflow instance is notified of the changes.

7. Copyright © 2006 Pilothouse Consulting Inc. All rights reserved. Supported WF Activities WF comes with many activities; however, SharePoint only supports a subset: –Code - add Visual Basic or C# code to your workflow. –ConditionedActivityGroup - perform a set of activities conditionally, based on criteria specific to each activity, until a condition is met for the ConditionedActivityGroup activity as a whole. –Scope - logically group activities, in order to provide a framework for transaction and exception handling. –Sequence - execute an ordered set of child activities. –Replicator - create multiple instances of a single child activity.

8. Copyright © 2006 Pilothouse Consulting Inc. All rights reserved. SharePoint Specific Activities WSS provides specific activities for: Creating, updating, completing, and deleting SharePoint tasks Creating, updating, and deleting SharePoint task alerts Enabling workflow forms within specific scopes, to allow users to modify workflows that are in progress

9. Copyright © 2006 Pilothouse Consulting Inc. All rights reserved. Demo: Sample Code 1.Examine sample code projects included with Enterprise Content Management Starter Toolkit 2.Examine workflow designer 3.Examine activities available in toolbox 4.Examine activity properties and the code that implements them

10. Copyright © 2006 Pilothouse Consulting Inc. All rights reserved. Demo: Simple Sequential Workflow 1.Create a new “SharePoint Sequential Workflow Library” project and examine all elements 2.Add new activities and write code for activities 3.Design an InfoPath form and associate with workflow 4.Deploy the workflow

11. Copyright © 2006 Pilothouse Consulting Inc. All rights reserved. Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow API example SPSite site = SPContext.Current.Site; SPWeb chemistry101Site = site.AllWebs["courses/chemistry101"]; SPContentType sopContentType = site.RootWeb.ContentTypes["SOP"]; SPWorkflowAssociationCollection workflowAssociationsCT = sopContentType.WorkflowAssociations; SPWorkflowTemplateCollection workflowTemplates = chemistry101Site.WorkflowTemplates; SPList courseMaterialsList = chemistry101Site.Lists["Course Materials"]; SPWorkflowAssociationCollection workflowAssociationsList = courseMaterialsList.WorkflowAssociations;

12. Copyright © 2006 Pilothouse Consulting Inc. All rights reserved. Demo: Workflow API 1.Use SPWorkflow, SPWorkflowAssociation, and SPWorkflowTemplate classes