How to create a custom sharepoint workflow?
Since your question is very generic, I can only provide a very generic answer. As such have a look at this introductory MSDN article about getting started with workflows.
There are several ways to succeed - the two most used might be using Visual Studio and developing a custom solution and on the other hand SharePoint Designer - the (more or less) graphical and intuitive tool to manage your SharePoint UI.
It really depends on what you are trying to do. You can build workflows that can do anything in .Net using Windows Workflow Foundation (WF3) but it takes a bit of learning to be productive. SharePoint Designer (SPD) workflows can do a few things e.g. send email, create tasks, etc. but I find you run up to limitations pretty quickly. It's difficult to move SPD workflows from DEV to TEST to PROD and you end spending a ton of time implementing workarounds for things like string manipulation etc. WF3 workflows must be deployed to your server as a WSP so it's a non-starter if your environment is locked down whereas SPD workflows are declarative and saved as Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) and do not need to be deployed by and administrator. If you have the money and you plan to create a lot of workflows you should look at Nintex which is the best of both worlds but only makes sense if you have more than 20 or so workflows.
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i need to know few things please
1- is sharepoint with windows workflow foundation (a good and dependable engine)
2- i am using .NET and sharepoint, what would be the best workflow plugin for sharepoint
we need it provide easy interface to create the work flow, connect and affect oracle, SQLSERVER, work with moss2007, give us full control on the look and design of the form page as well as the approval or any pages and forms used within the workflow ( am i asking for too much !!:) )
the workflows will be used for approvals, change requests, requests of equipments, leave application, .... etc
Windows Workflow Foundation is very strong and can be relied upon for SharePoint workflows.
In the market there are lot of plugins available for workflow creation.
SharePoint Desginer
ShareVis Designer
Nintex Workflow
Captaris Workflow
I have provided a few references above. Kindly evaluate your needs and use one of them.
SharePoint makes use of Windows Workflow Foundation and it's a pretty stable and powerful solution. If you need an easy to use interface to create workflows, you may want to take a look at Nintex Workflow. We use it at the company and are very pleased with it. There are versions for both SharePoint 2007 and 2010.
http://www.nintex.com/en-US/Pages/default.aspx
We are deploying sharepoint MOSS 2007 at our work. I'm trying to come up with a sharepoint development and deployment methodology. We have Dev/QA/Prod environments and I need a way, preferably automated to deploy changes from Dev to QA and from there to prod.
We are creating site collections web parts etc. Some of it is done directly within sharepoint, some through Sharepoint designer or visual studio. I'm looking for a way to extract this and deploy it to other enviornments.
I tried stsadm backup/restore import/export etc but they all move the data along with it as well. I just need the structure deployed. Content deployment paths and jobs does the same thing as well.
We use MSBuild & Curisecontrol.net for other .net projects to automate build/deployment process. I'm looking for something similar with sharepoint if possible.
What are your best practices for this? Since my team is learning we don't have a defined process and we are open to change our development process if needed.
First off, it's a hard problem.
Probably the 'best' method is to put everything into solution packages - but its quite hard to do correctly.
There is a lot of opinions out there - the best I can do is give you further reading
SharePoint Solution Deployment Strategies
SO - How do you deploy your SharePoint solutions?
ROSS - A commercial toolset to help with deployment
DocAve Deployment Manager
SharePoint development / deployment isn't as finely tuned as it is with regular .NET. I haven't heard of anyone using CI solutions for this.
Your basic unit of deployment is a solution package (a WSP file). It's basically a CAB file with a different extension. WSPBuilder is helpful for creating them. (http://wspbuilder.codeplex.com)
SPSource (http://spsource.codeplex.com) is pretty good for reverse engineering some stuff that you build in a web browser, such as Content Types and Lists. It's my preferred way of doing this stuff - trying to cut them by hand is no fun. I've had SPSource reverse engineer simple lists into 2000 line XML files.
Powershell is important for SPT 2010. James Kovacs has built a build tool called psake which plugs into PSH. It looks pretty straightforward, though I need to figure out PSH properly first.
Spend some time on http://sharepointdevwiki.com as this an evolving resource.
Microsoft patterns and practices group have released some guidance as well at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd203468.aspx
LearnDevNow.com is also selling online training videos that are pretty good and very affordable (about USD100). They will show you many of the good ways of doing things.
Cheers
Mike
is it possible to create a task in a task list in a site other than the site to which the workflow is deployed to.
thanks
Nope - this isn't supported. The workflow must be deployed to all sites.
I assume you are talking about a SharePoint Designer Workflow and not a Visual Studio workflow where pretty much anything is possible.
You can either create a custom Activity in Visual Studio for use in SharePoint Designer or you use something like the Workflow Power Pack to add a little bit of custom code directly into SharePoint Designer workflows.
Please note that I have worked on the Workflow Power Pack, so consider me somewhat biased :-)
I would like to start developing a simple Workflow application in Sharepoint. What files should I download?
SharePoint Server 2007 SDK?
SharePoint Server?
SQL Server?
Visual Studio?
other?
Are they all required for workflow development?
I do not have SharePoint anywhere, please include its components in your answer.
If you don't have SharePoint installed, the free WSS 3.0 version is available for download from Microsoft. Follow these steps to install in a single server environment. It will install a basic version of SQL Server. Note this is suitable for prototyping only, not a production deployment, due to restrictions in the basic install.
Then use SharePoint Designer to create the workflows, free from Microsoft. There is no need for any other software. This allows you to configure workflow against a particular list in your SharePoint site with a wizard-like interface. See this topic on Office Online for more information.
If you need to develop a reusable workflow that can be deployed to many different sites or a production SharePoint instance then this is a much larger time investment. Start by reading one of the many other questions on this site for "getting started with SharePoint" that will give resources to how the product works. Be warned: there's a reasonable learning curve. Once you have a solid understanding, you could follow it up with a book such as Professional SharePoint 2007 Workflow Programming (first search result).
Another "warning" on designer...
The workflows you create there are allways fixed to a single list, and you cannot deploy them to a production server. So the "reusable" part from the above answer even includes a "portable" component.
Also those workflows are very static, since they only contain some speciffic actions that you can perform. (So no custom code etc).
I am planning to build a case management system from scratch, The system will incorporate a workflow. Cases will contain activities to be performed by different people inside and outside the company within a specified window of time.
Does SharePoint support a configurable workflow engine that I might use for this project?
Absolutely. Workflow is one of the strong parts of SharePoint. Out-of-the box you or your users can build workflows using the free SharePoint Designer. Depending on your exact requirements this may be good enough.
If you need a more advanced workflow editor then you may want to consider Nintex Workflow or K2. Alternatively you can write your own workflows in Visual Studio or buy 3rd part Workflow Actions for SharePoint Designer.
I have included some useful links below:
Building workflows using SharePoint Designer
Creating workflows using Visual Studio
3rd Part Workflow actions to embed VB or C# directly into SharePoint Designer Workflows. Note that I have worked on this product so consider my recommendation biased ;-)