I wrote up a detailed article a few weeks ago describing how to create a SharePoint Designer workflow that sends a task reminder email on a daily basis. It’s been birt á nýju SharePoint Magazine síða. More generally, grein sýnir hvernig á að búa til lykkja uppbyggingu í SPD.

Blaðið er fjölbreytt úrval af greinum þar á meðal, m.a., mjög tæknileg efni, interviews and industry news. I recommend you add it to your RSS feed.

Ef þú ert með vöru eða þjónustu til að selja, I’d also consider advertising on the site. It’s off to a strong start with several thousand pairs of eyes looking at it already. That’s sure to grow.

Loks, ef þú hefur verið kláði að skrifa eitthvað og fá það út fyrir framan stærri markhóps, this is a great time and place to scratch it.

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Mark Miller yfir á End User SharePoint has posted my latest article about using SharePoint Designer to create great workflow solutions up on his site. Stöðva það út.

Í þessari grein, Ég tala um hönnun ferli og, í meiri smáatriðum, hvernig á að setja upp áreiðanlegt og repeatable próf ferli með SharePoint lögun (Raða listum, site templates). The article targets End Users, but the approach is good for developers too.

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Í síðustu viku, Ég var að vinna út hvernig á að lykkja og innleiða ástand vél nota SharePoint Designer og getið, Sem innskot, að ég myndi líklega skrifa blogg um betri workflow skógarhögg.

Jæja, Sanjeev Rajput beat me to it. Líttu.

Saving þig inn gögn í sérsniðnum lista virðist betri til að nota reglulega workflow sögu:

• Það er bara sérsniðin lista, svo þú getur flutt það til skara mjög auðveldlega.
• Þú getur búið til skoðanir, virk sía gögnin, o.fl..
• Það er ekki háð sjálfvirka hreinsa þú færð með reglulegu workflow sögu.

Það eru nokkrar hættur / downsides:

• Margir keyra workflows með fullt af skógarhögg gæti valdið of mikið af gögnum til að skrifa á listann.
• Maybe you *do* want automatic purging. You don’t get that feature with this approach (án þess að erfðaskrá).
• Security is tricky. In order to write to the list, the user must have permission to do so. That means that it’s probably not suitable for any kind of "official" audit since the user could discover the list and edit it. This could be overcome with some custom programming.

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This past week I finished off a proof of concept project for a client in Manhattan. While implementing the solution, Ég hljóp inn í annað galli mosa KPIs (sjá hér fyrir fyrri KPI útgáfu og lausn minn).

Bakgrunnur: We used SharePoint Designer workflow to model a fairly complex multi-month long business process. As it chugged along, it would update some state information in a list. KPIs use this data to do their mojo.

We decided to create a new site each time a new one of these business processes kicks off. Aside from the workflow itself, these sites host several document libraries, use audience targeting and so forth. Just a bunch of stuff to help with collaboration among the internal employees, traveling employees and the client’s participating business partners.

We also wanted to show some KPIs that monitor the overall health of that specific business process as promoted by the workflow state data and viewed using the KPIs.

Lokum, we used KPI list items that do a count on a view on a list in the site (as opposed to pulling from another data source, like excel or SQL).

The Problem: As you can imagine, assuming we were to carry the basic idea forward into a production world, we would want a site template. Provision a new site based off a "business process" sniðmát.

The problem is that you can’t seem to get a functioning KPI that way. When I create a new site based on a template with a KPI List and KPI web part, the new site’s KPI data are broken. The new site’s KPI list points at whatever source you defined when you first saved it as a template.

By way of example:

• Create a new site and build it to perfection. This site includes the KPI data.
• Save that as a template.
• Create a new site and base if off the template.
• This new site’s KPI list items’ sources point to the site template, not the current site.

The instantiation process does not correct the URL.

I tried to solve this by specifying a relative URL when defining the KPI list item. Hins, I couldn’t get any variation of that to work.

I always want to pair up these "problem" blog posts with some kind of solution, but in this case I don’t have a good one. The best I can figure is that you need to go in to the newly provisioned site and fix everything manually. The UI makes this even harder because changing the URL of the source list causes a refresh, so you really have to redefine the whole thing from scratch.

If anyone knows a better way to handle this, vinsamlegast staða a athugasemd.

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I’ve recently learned that it’s possible and even fairly easy to create a state machine workflow using SharePoint Designer. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that good stuff and I had a need this week that looked for an invention. Coincidentally, Ég rakst þetta MSDN vettvangur staða svo og. My personal experience this week and that "independent confirmation" lends strength to my conviction. I plan to write about this at greater length with a full blown example, en hér er GIST það:

• The aðferð notar þá staðreynd að workflow getur breytt til lista yfir atriði, thereby triggering a new workflow. I’ve normally considered this to be a nuisance and even bloggaði um að nota semaphores að höndla það.
• SharePoint gerir margar sjálfstæðar workflows að vera virkt gegn tilteknum atriðinu.

Til að stilla það:

• Hönnun ástand vél (þ.e., að ríki og hvernig ríki umskipti frá einu til annars).
• Innleiða hvers ríkis sem sérstakt workflow.
• Stilla hvert þessara ríkisins workflows að framkvæma til að bregðast við öllum breytingum í atriðinu.

Hvert ríki workflow segir þetta gróft mynstur:

• Við frumstilling, determine whether it should really run by inspecting state information in the "current item". Abort if not.
• Að vinna verk.
• Update the "current item" with new state information. This triggers an update to the current item and fires off all the state workflows.

Innskot frá því augljósa ávinning sem hægt er að búa til declarative ástand vél workflow, allt sem ríkið upplýsingar er frábær fyrir KPIs byggja og áhugavert sjónarmið.

Það hjartarskinn hafa nokkuð veruleg galli — standard workflow history tracking is even more useless than normal 🙂 That’s easily remedied, þó. Store all of your audit type information in a custom list. That’s probably a good idea even for vanilla sequential workflow, but that’s for another blog post 🙂

I call this a "mea culpa" því ég hef, því miður, said more than once on forums and elsewhere that one must use visual studio to create a state machine workflow. That simply isn’t true.

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It’s possible to cause an endless loop in a SharePoint Designer workflow. A common implementation pattern like this causes the problem:

• Búa til workflow og tengja við lista.
• Gefa til kynna að það ætti að byrja á að búa til ný atriði og uppfæra núverandi atriði.
• A step in the workflow updates a field in "Current Item".
• Þar sem núverandi lið breytt, workflow byrjar ný.

Til að hindra þetta endalaus lykkja, innleiða einfalt Semaphore:

• Bæta við vefsvæði dálk (eða dálk á listann / bókasafn ef þú ert ekki að nota tegundir efnis).
• Fela það frá breyta síðu (auðvelt að gera ef síða dálki með eiginleika hennar, ekki eins auðvelt ef listi dálk).
• Í workflow, athuga hvort verðmæti Semaphore dálkur er auður.
• Ef það er autt, setja það til a non-autt gildi og halda áfram.
• Ef er er ekki autt, hætta strax.

Þetta getur orðið nokkuð nuanced lausn, eftir kröfum fyrirtækja og svo framvegis, en það er verið framkvæmanlegur mynstur þegar ég hef þörf það.

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Eins og margir vita, að þjálfun starfsmanna sniðmát sem Microsoft hér hefur galla sem við getum endurskapað með þessum skrefum:

• Búa til flokk með max stærð 10 nemendur.
• Nýskráning –> Total available seats properly decrements by one. Niðurstaða: 9 laus sæti.
• Unregister: –> Bug. Total available seats should increment by one. It does not. Niðurstaða: 9 laus sæti eins og á SharePoint, en í raun, það eru 10 laus sæti.

Lausn: Nota SharePoint Designer til að leiðrétta workflow.

Fyrsta, open up the site. The folder list for me looks like this:

If we have a look at the "Attendee registration" workflow, we see that there is a step labeled "Enforce seating policy". It looks like this:

This step in the workflow updates the item by incrementing the "Filled Seats" metadata column on the course. If we pull that up in more detail, við sjáum þetta:

Það er öllum þeim upplýsingum sem við þurfum að festa Afskráninguna workflow.

Ef við flettir yfir á Afskráninguna workflow, there is no similar workflow step. Add it as follows:

1: Expand "Attendee unregistration" og opna XOML (sjá fyrstu skjámyndina ef þú ert glataður).

2: Bæta við nýjum workflow breytu, "New Filled Seats" of type "Number".

3: Assign a value to "New Filled Seats" eins og sýnt:

4: Lækka fylltum Sæti með 1:

5: Uppfærðu tengdar Course atriði:

6: Make sure all the steps are in the right sequence. Fyrir mig, það lítur svona út:

7: Klára workflow aftur byggja það.

8: Próf.

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Einn af vaxandi mynstur ég finna í föndur SharePoint lausnir notar SharePoint Designer workflow og atburð móttökutæki.

Hér er fyrirtæki atburðarás tvö setja það í samhengi:

• Ég senda skjal til læknir lib.
• Ég sparka burt multi-skref workflow búin til með SharePoint Designer.
• Á einhverjum tímapunkti á því ferli, workflow assigns a task to someone (via collect data from user or assign a task).
• We want to use a KPI to track how long that task is awaiting completion. The KPI shows green for tasks that are completed or due more than 3 days from now. It shows yellow if the task is due tomorrow or today. It shows red if the task is past due.
• Here’s the kicker: I want the date that drives that KPI to be holiday-aware.

I can’t calculate a holiday-aware due date in SharePoint Designer workflow very easily. I would have to create a custom action or use a 3rd party tool. Hins, it’s easy enough to calculate such a date in an event receiver. Merge those two together and we get a pattern like this:

• Define a hidden yes/no site column on the document library labeled "DoCalcualteDueDate".
• Initialize it to false.
• At the appropriate time in the workflow (e.g. just before the "collect data" aðgerð), assign that value to True.
• An ItemUpdate() event receiver looks to see if "DoCalculateDueDate" is true. Since the event receiver runs on every update, "DoCalculateDueDate" is normally false.
• When workflow assigns DoCalculateDueDate to true, the event receiver calculates the holiday-aware due date.
• When the event receiver does this calculation, it sets the DoCalculateDueDate flag to false.

Í lok, SPD workflow is communicated with an event receiver via the DoCalculateDueDate semaphore and we have holiday-aware due dates that are assigned at the exactly correct moment in the workflow’s life. SharePoint Designer controls when the due date is assigned but the event receiver performs the actual calculation and assignment.

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UPDATE: I’ve been researching how to embed a SPD workflow into a site definition. Þetta MSDN vettvangur keðja hefur nokkrar áhugaverðar upplýsingar. It’s not conclusive, en bendir á leið í gegnum frumskóginn.

I’m giving this post a slightly oddball "Observed Behavior" lead since I’m a little leery of drawing conclusions from it. SPD workflows are … skapstór.

Fólk er oft að spyrja / spá / fretting over moving SPD workflows from one place to another. Í dag, Ég fylgdi þessum leiðbeiningum og gert þessar athuganir:

• Ég bjó til Workflow nota SharePoint Designer í síðuna fylgir skjal bókasafn.
• Tilheyrandi skjal bókasafn húsa þegar nokkur skjöl.
• Ég bjargaði síðuna sem sniðmát.
• Þegar ég vistað á síðuna sem sniðmát, Ég spara efni og.
• Ég bjó til nýja síðu í sama staður safn með að sniðmát.

Á þessum tímapunkti, I tried to run the workflow. It promptly terminated itself with the log message, "Failed on start".

I expected this. I have low expectations when it comes to moving SPD workflows around.

I continued:

• Opened the site in SharePoint Designer.
• Had a peek at the workflow. It seemed fine.
• I clicked "Finish".
• I ran the workflow.

Í þetta sinn, það í uppnámi fínn.

I’ll add that this workflow used the "collect data from user" action which is a relatively complex action under the hood.

I tentatively conclude that the process of "finishing" the workflow caused SPD to properly associate the SPD workflow with the new document library. I also conclude the XOML and other XML artifacts are reasonably "loose". They are not super tightly coupled to the document library.

What does this mean? Assuming it’s a reliable and reproducible process, there’s at least one rough method we can use to move them around. I don’t know if this would work if we crossed site collection boundaries or even more drastically, entire new farms (e.g. dev to stage to prod).

If you’re reading this and inclined, please post a comment or email mig your SharePoint Designer migration story. I’ll gladly update this posting with any insights thus offered.

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It’s often useful to store status information in a custom list such as an approval code which should never be directly manipulated by end users. This is a common business scenario. I have been working on a project this year that generates various status and reminder dates via SharePoint Designer workflows that then drive KPIs and generally support time-critical business processes.

Use a site content type / column to achieve this effect.

Create a site content type with the status column as shown:

Note the "Status (for Demo)" field at the bottom.

Næsta, click on the column name to access the column’s properties. Select "Hidden (Will not appear in forms)" in the Column Settings section as shown:

This removes the field from the standard edit/update forms. Hins, it is still available in views, KPIs, the object model and anywhere else you want to use it, including SPD workflow.

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