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 :-)
Related
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.
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
To preface, I am working with SharePoint Server 2010 Beta 2, Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate RC.
I have built a custom Content Type based on the Item type with a few custom site columns. I also have built a custom Sequential Workflow using Visual Studio 2010. This is a relatively simple workflow that creates a task, waits for the task to complete, sets the workflow to complete. I am able to deploy this workflow to the site collection through VS 2010 deploy (which is pretty nice, btw). The problem I have is that when I try to associate the custom Content Type with my custom workflow, that workflow is not listed in the workflow templates to choose from. There are only the OOTB SharePoint workflows to choose. The kicker is that if I create a list and associate a workflow to that list, my custom workflow is in the workflow template list. This makes sense since at the start of building a custom workflow in VS2010, one of the first questions is whether the workflow is a Site or a List workflow and I selected List. Is the issue that List workflows are not allowed to be associated with Content Types?!?
Thanks.
In your workflow's elements.xml, look for AssociationCategories and change it to ContentType like so:
<AssociationCategories>ContentType</AssociationCategories>
Big thanks to my co-worker, Yves for pointing this out :)
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 ;-)
Does anyone know if it is possible to Lookup list data from a different site when creating a workflow with Sharepoint Designer 2007? The Define Workflow Lookup dialog only allows you to pick from lists in the current Sharepoint site you are creating the workflow in.
Ideally I'd like to be able to pick from a list in the parent site, or a site from a given URL (eg. http://myserver/mysite)
You cannot do that with OOTB activities. However you can build a custom SharePoint designer activity to do the task you need. We usually create just a call web service activity and then we call a SharePoint we service we need.
Take a look at this CodePlex project for some custom SharePoint Designer activities.
SPDActivities on CodePlex are very useful. However, if your exact requirements are not covered by any of those activies then you may want to consider embedding c# or vb.net code directly into the SharePoint Designer Workflow (Without resorting to Visual Studio).
I wrote a blog article about how to do it exactly at the following location:
http://www.muhimbi.com/blog/2009/12/embed-c-or-vb-code-directly-in.html