Wieħed mill-mudelli emerġenti nsib fil opri soluzzjonijiet SharePoint tiggwida SharePoint Designer workflow u riċevitur avveniment.

Hawnhekk huwa xenarju tan-negozju li tqiegħed fil-kuntest:

• I upload dokument għal LIB dok.
• I kick off multi-pass fluss tax-xogħol maħluqa bl-użu Disinjatur SharePoint.
• F'xi punt matul dak il-proċess, workflow tassenja kompitu lil xi ħadd (permezz tinġabar data mill-utent jew tassenja kompitu).
• 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.
• Hawn il-kicker: Irrid id-data li drives li KPI li tkun btala-konxju.

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. Madankollu, 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 l falza.
• Fiż-żmien xieraq fil-fluss tax-xogħol (e.g. just before the "collect data" azzjoni), tassenja dak il-valur għall Veru.
• L ItemUpdate() event receiver looks to see if "DoCalculateDueDate" is true. Since the event receiver runs on every update, "DoCalculateDueDate" normalment falza.
• Meta workflow tassenja DoCalculateDueDate li veru, ir-riċevitur avveniment tikkalkula d-data festa-konxji minħabba.
• Meta r-riċevitur avveniment ma dan il-kalkolu, hi tistipula l-bandiera DoCalculateDueDate biex falza.

Fl-aħħar, 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. This MSDN forum chain has some interesting information. It’s not conclusive, iżda jindika triq permezz tal-ġungla.

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 … temperamental.

People are often asking / wondering / fretting over moving SPD workflows from one place to another. Illum, I followed these steps and made these observations:

• I created a workflow using SharePoint Designer in a site attached to a document library.
• The associated document library already housed several documents.
• I saved the site as a template.
• When I saved the site as a template, I saved the content as well.
• I created a new site in the same site collection using that template.

F'dan il-punt, 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.

Din id-darba, maħduma multa.

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 me your SharePoint Designer migration story. I’ll gladly update this posting with any insights thus offered.

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Abbona għall-blog tiegħi.

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.

Tintuża tip kontenut tas-sit / kolonna biex jinkiseb dan l-effett.

Oħloq tip kontenut tas-sit mal-kolonna istatus kif muri:

Note the "Status (għall Demo)" qasam fil-qiegħ.

Li jmiss, click on the column name to access the column’s properties. Select "Hidden (Mhux se jidhru fil-forom)" fil-Kolonna Settings sezzjoni kif muri:

This removes the field from the standard edit/update forms. Madankollu, għadu disponibbli fil-fehmiet, KPIs, il-mudell oġġett u imkien ieħor inti tixtieq li jużawh, including SPD workflow.

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Abbona għall-blog tiegħi.

This blog entry is more of an "in the realm of the possible" dħul vs. info konkreti.

We have a technical design that calls for us to create a site in a site collection via a manually launched workflow process. Bażikament, users enter data into a "new customer" lista tad-dwana u mbagħad meta jkunu lesti u vvalidati l-proċess dħul tad-data, għandna bżonn li jinħoloq sit għall dak il-klijent.

Jien kemm big fan ta 'workflow dikjarattiva kif ukoll viżwali programmer dgħajfa workflow studio, hekk jien ridt li jilħqu l-ħtieġa li jużaw SharePoint Designer.

I pjan biex jiktbu dwar dan f'aktar dettall (u nisperaw preżenti għal grupp ta 'utenti jew tnejn fis-sena li ġejja), iżda hawnhekk huwa l-soluzzjoni ġenerali:

• Oħloq azzjoni drawwa li jintegra ma SPD.
• L-azzjoni tad-dwana tippermetti SPD li tinvoka servizz web u tgħaddih sensiela ta 'XML.
• Locates servizz web tal-ringiela fil-lista tad-dwana u toħloq sit ġdid bħala per-data għal dak klijent ġdid bl-użu ta 'definizzjoni sit custom.
• Web servizz imbagħad jaġġorna l-lista tad-dwana ma 'xi informazzjoni bħal link għas-sit il-ġdid.

Aħna kkunsidrati approċċi oħra, such as event handlers and visual studio based workflow. The SPD approach gives our end users a little more control over the process. Granted, hemm ħafna ta 'C # kodiċi f'din is-soluzzjoni, imma hija mgeżwra ġewwa workflow dikjarattiva, hekk aħna nikseb xi wħud mill-benefiċċji ta 'workflow dikjarattiva filwaqt hooking fis-servizz tal-ħolqien tal site.

All we need now is an easy tool to automatically migrate SPD workflows around as easily as we can for visual studio workflows and we’ll really be cooking with gas 🙂 I understand that some folk are out there working on this problem and I hope they have some good success with it soon.

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Abbona għall-blog tiegħi.

I’ve been playing around with custom actions for SharePoint Designer for some time (tara hawn for some detailed stuff, if that interests you).

Fil-proġett kurrenti tiegħi, we need to do some fairly heavy lifting and we want to use declarative SPD workflow to manage the associated business process.

Long storja qasira, this is entirely possible. I extended my Codeplex project to invoke a "helper service" and now we can invoke a web service directly from an SPD workflow.

Here’s the signature:

 pubbliku string Dispatcher(
        Guid WebID, // Passed by the runtime environment
        Guid SiteID, // Passed by the runtime environment
        string ListID, // Passed by the RTE (don't know why this is a string, not a GUID)
        int ListItemID, // Passed by the RTE.
        string XmlMessage) // Passed by the user as declared in SPD.

This leverages the fact that we can get at important workflow information, like the site, list ID, eċċ. This is well documented in several places for those of you interested in creating your own custom actions. The idea is to extract the XML string as provided by the user to dispatch an appropriate procedure. Fun stuff!

Sfortunatament, this is obviously a one-way ticket down to "Loosey Goosey" anti-pattern land, but it’s better than hitting a brick wall 🙂

Is it an anti-pattern if you do it even though you know it’s an anti-pattern?

I hope to wrap this inside Codeplex in the near future. If you’re interested in me doing so, give me poke (email or leave a comment) and I’ll be that more enthusiastic about doing it 🙂

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