Slide Deck of the session "Getting Started with SharePoint 2013 Workflows"
Date : 25 October 2014
Event : SPSEvents Washington DC Reston
Place : Microsoft Technology Center, 12012 Sunset Hills Road, Reston , Virginia USA 20190
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About Today’s Session
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•What are Workflows
•Limitations of SP2010workflows
•Architectural Changes in SP2013Workflows
•Workflow Manager
•Enhancement in SP2013Workflows
•SP2013OOTBWorkflows
•Enhancements in SPD2013
•Limitations of SPD2013workflows
•Workflows in Visual Studio 2012
•Limitations of Visual Studio Workflows
•Best Practices
•Forms in SP2013Workflows
•Third Party Products
Agenda
Outcome: Familiarity with SharePoint 2013 Workflows
Objective: Getting Stared with SharePoint 2013 Workflows
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Helps to Automate Business Processes
Helps to meet the Industry Standards
Helps Organizations to function Effectively
Important for success of SharePoint Implementations
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What are Workflows?
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Types of Workflows
Sequential
State Machine
•Activities occur in sequence
•On rejection , begin from start
•Simple Business Processes example, Leave Request
•Activities are not sequential
•Can by pass activities based on business logic
•Complex business processes example, Financial Aid
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Started with MOSS 2007 -> Based on Workflow Foundation.
Workflow Foundation was introduced in the release .NET 3.0 and its capabilities updated in .NET 3.5 and .NET 3.5 SP1
In MOSS 2007 custom workflows can be created using SPD2007 and Visual Studio
No reusable workflows
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History of Enhancements in SharePoint Workflows
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Major Enhancements in SharePoint 2010 Workflows
Architecturally similar to MOSS 2007
Site Based Workflows
Modify OOTBworkflow templates by importing them into SharePoint 2010 Designer
Create Reusable workflow and using Visio Services visualize the status of the Workflow
Import SPD2010 workflows in Visual Studio 2010
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Limitations of SharePoint 2010 Workflows
Designed primarily for OnPremisedeployments
Workflows are not scalable, they are stored in Content Database
Looping is not supported out of the box
State Machine workflows can only be created using Visual Studio 2010
Extending Workflows usually requires full trust solutions
Performance and Scalability remained key challenge
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The SharePoint Forecast is …. Cloudy
“Craig Roth, Managing Vice President: Communication, Collaboration, and Content, Gartner Group”
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SP2013workflows are built using WF4.5 and run out of SharePoint
Workflow is separate server Product called Windows Azure Workflow and not part of SPInfrastructure
The name “Azure” is confusing….this Product runs on Premise
SP2013workflows execute in an Azure service called Workflow Manager 1.0
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New SharePoint 2013 Workflows Architecture
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Types of Windows Azure Workflow
Windows Azure Workflow Server
•Provides scalable robust workflow capabilities for on-premisedeployment
Windows Azure Workflow Services
•Provides a scalable robust, workflow platform in Office 365 and cloud based solutions
Two
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Workflow Manager server application should be installed on separate server (Part of SP2013farm or separate)
SPWFEincludes Workflow client software that handles the integration between the manager and the SPFarm
Communication between manager and client occurs using REST API and Oauth
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New SharePoint 2013 Workflows Architecture
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Workflow Manager
Separate Product
Separate farm/Co locate with SPFarm
Installation
Disaster Recovery
1 or 3 server farms
Debugging
Fiddler
Maintenance
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SP2013workflows are not supported on SP2013Foundation
SP2013workflows are fully declarative
SP2013workflows are no longer compiled into .NET assemblies instead XAMLfiles defines workflow and their execution
No more custom code
Build WebServicesfor custom business logic
SP2013workflows are available in SharePoint Online
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New SharePoint 2013 Workflows Architecture
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PowerShell Command to Register SharePoint Site collection
Register-SPWorkflowService-SPSitehttp://sp2013:80- WorkflowHostUri"http://sp2013:12291" -AllowOAuthHttp
Need to explicitly register the site collection
Good news….in SharePoint Online/Office 365 all steps are already done…
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New SharePoint 2013 Workflows Architecture
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How the workflows will run?
Workflow Starts
SP2010Style Workflow?
Use SP2010Workflow Engine
Use New Workflow Manager
Workflow Executes
Workflow Ends
Workflow Executes
Yes
No
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Major Enhancements in SharePoint 2013 Workflows
Multi-Tenancy
Fully Declarative Authoring
SP2013workflows call SP2010workflows and vice versa
SP2010workflows will continue to work in SP2013but will not be upgraded to SP2013workflows
Option of manual upgrade
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SharePoint 2013 Workflows Associations
List/Libraries
No Content Types
Solution :
Check the content type column and then initiate the workflow
Use SP2010workflow & attach that to Content Type. Call SP2013workflow from SP2010workflow
Sites
SPD2013 Workflows
Visual Studio Workflows
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Workflow Manager is installed
Site Collection is registered with Workflow Manager
User Profile Service is setup and sync has run at least once
To execute the workflow, we will need valid upn( User Principal Name)
In SharePoint Online everything is already setup for you.
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Before we start creating SharePoint 2013 in SPD2013
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Major Enhancements in SharePoint 2013 Designer
A visual Workflow development experience that uses Visio 2013
A new action that enables no-code web service calls from within a workflow
New Actions for creating a task and starting a task
A new Dictionary data type for working with complex data type
New workflow building blocks such as Stage, Loop, and App Step
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Improved Workflow Logic & Control SharePoint 2013 Designer
Stages –Can create State Machine workflows using Stages
Loop : Repeat one or more actions a specified number of times
SP2010Workflow Re-Use: SPD2013enables starting an existing SP2010workflow, including passing initiation parameters. Reuse SP2010workflows.
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Improved Design Features in SharePoint 2013 Designer
Visual Workflow Designer –SPD2013 includes both a text based designer and a visual designer
Copy and Paste : SPD2013supports copy and pasting logic and actions within the text designer
Better Packaging : Save list workflows as template and reuse.
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Limitations of SharePoint 2013 Designer Workflows
Can not create full trust solutions
Can not deploy workflows as SharePoint Apps
No Source Control
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SharePoint 2013 Workflows Using Visual Studio 2012
Full access to the Workflow Foundation in .NET Framework 4.5
Supports deployment as full trust solutions, Sandbox Solutions as well as SPApps
You can use Source Control
Create Custom Activities
Create Custom Forms for workflows
Set Breakpoints on Activities
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Guidance for forms -InfoPath
•InfoPath will continue to be supported for a long time
•Don’t invest more on InfoPath
•Consider other alternative for the short-term/long-term
•Wait until Microsoft guidance materialized
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•Don’t use OOTBTask List and History List as audit log
•For large lists, don’t remove the workflow, but set to no new instance
Do it in non business hours
•Don’t let the workflow manager cert expires
•Keep workflow initiation activity to minimum
•Use logging-
“Log to History List”
Best Practices