Workflow for SharePoint

Workflow allows you to attach a business process to documents in Microsoft SharePoint. This process can control almost any aspect of a document in SharePoint, including routing of documents for approval, reviews and/or the document's lifecycle.

Workflows can be as simple or complex as your business processes require. You can create workflows that the user initiates, or workflows that SharePoint automatically initiates based on some event, such as a new document being added to SharePoint from KnowledgeLake scanning and capture software.

SharePoint workflows are made available to end-users at the list or document library level. Workflow can be applied to documents, SharePoint list items and to content types. Multiple workflows may be available for any given document. Multiple workflows can run simultaneously on the same document.

Combining the functionality of SharePoint workflow with KnowledgeLake Imaging for SharePoint software, you are provided with a rich environment for creating document-centric workflow solutions to address process bottlenecks often associated with paper based or document based business processes. With SharePoint Workflow and KnowledgeLake Imaging, you can improve business processes, increase user productivity, improve compliance and provide transparent visibility into your business processes.

SharePoint Workflow can be extended and enhanced through the use of a KnowledgeLake Technology Partner to provide additional extensions to SharePoint workflow and SharePoint reporting. Tight integration with KnowledgeLake Imaging provides you with a seamless environment for rapidly creating and implementing document-centric workflow solutions for your departments and enterprise.

SharePoint 2010 provides more choices in tooling to better fit the needs of those creating and maintaining workflow models. The tools for workflow development include Visual Studio 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010 and Visio 2010.

Visual Studio 2010 includes many tooling improvements for SharePoint projects, specifically for workflow projects. The new SharePoint Solution packaging helps deploy your workflows easily onto the SharePoint server, allowing you to add ASPX workflow initiation and association forms to Visual Studio 2010 workflow projects.

SharePoint Designer 2010 also has a new graphical workflow designer for designing workflows and deploying them directly to SharePoint. It can also be used as a prototyping tool before workflows are further developed in Visual Studio 2010.

Another improvement in SharePoint Designer 2010 is that it now allows you to edit the out-of-the-box workflows that come with SharePoint. It will also use InfoPath forms if InfoPath is installed or the Data Form Web Part if InfoPath is not installed (previously, only ASPX forms were used by SharePoint Designer 2007). Since you can use InfoPath forms now, it makes it very easy to edit those forms later with InfoPath to improve them. If you have new columns specified in a workflow, they will automatically be added to the schema of the list that you associate with the workflow. These are known as association columns and can be used throughout the SharePoint Designer workflow. User profile data can be bound to properties in workflow, making it possible to get information about the SharePoint user profile. For example, you could look up the name of a direct manager for approvals.

SharePoint Designer 2010 includes a new task process designer that creates an activity in the workflow but allows flexibility in how you manage the approval process all within that one activity. This includes defining escalation processes, delegation, defining approval requirements and semantics of what happens if the underlying document is changed during the approval.

Workflow models can be created in Visio 2010 for further editing in SharePoint Designer 2010. Visio 2010 supports Business Process Modeling Notation. It also supports sub-processes and containers to break up the diagram and validation to analyze a diagram to ensure it is properly constructed.

Each server farm contains a workflow associations table. Each entry in this table contains association data for a workflow as it applies to a specific content type, list, or document library. This association data typically includes whether the workflow is started automatically or by users, and the task and history lists for the workflow. If a workflow has been added to multiple content types, lists, or document libraries, it will have one entry for each such association. Likewise, if you add multiple workflows to a specific content type, list, or document library, then the table contains one entry for each workflow added to the content type, list, or document library.

The figure below illustrates the conceptual workflow architecture in SharePoint. Each content type, list, and document library in the farm is linked to the workflows added to it through the workflow association table. Each workflow has a workflow definition. This XML definition specifies the identity of the actual workflow assembly, and class within that assembly, as well as the location of any workflow forms the workflow needs to run.

» Introduction to Workflows in SharePoint Foundation
» Learn about Collaborative Workflow & Improvements in SharePoint 2010
» Learn about the Workflow deployment process
» Learn about Developing business processes with SharePoint 2010 workflows