SharePoint 2010: Going with the Flow - Working with SharePoint Workflows

Using workflows in SharePoint 2010 is a good way to automate complex business processes.

By Brien Posey

Many of the applications organizations use today automate complex business processes. Automating electronic processes, like automatically routing an e-mail to the correct recipient, is fairly straightforward. It’s much more difficult to automate processes involving manual interaction.

As far back as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007, Microsoft sought to resolve this problem with SharePoint workflows, which are essentially approval-routing mechanisms. Suppose someone in your marketing department came up with a new advertisement. They wouldn’t just send the advertisement directly to an ad agency. There’s a whole chain of requisite internal approvals.

The ad would have to go to an editor, through the company’s legal department, and possibly to a senior executive before it’s ever sent to the outside world. The problem with such approval requirements is that people are busy. Tasks like this can slip through the cracks. Any number of human errors could derail the approval routing process.

SharePoint workflows are designed to automate such processes. You can even design a workflow to send a reminder or automatically contact a manager when someone neglects a task.

Workflows played a prominent role in MOSS 2007, but as great as they were, they tended to be a bit rigid. For the most part, administrators were forced to work within the confines of the SharePoint GUI when creating workflows.

Microsoft has built much more flexibility into the process of creating workflows in SharePoint 2010. Although you can still use the SharePoint GUI to associate a workflow with a list or library, you’ll have to create the workflow outside of SharePoint (unless you use one of the built-in workflows).

Consequently, Microsoft gives you several different tools for creating workflows. Generally speaking, the tool of choice for developing SharePoint workflows will be SharePoint Designer 2010. Professional developers can create further customizations by using Visual Studio 2010 to modify code that was created by SharePoint Designer 2010, or they can develop workflows from scratch.

Venturing Forth with Visio

Creating a Workflow

To create a workflow, open Visio 2010 and select the File tab. When you do, you’ll be prompted as to what type of diagram you want to create. Choose the Flowchart folder, select the Microsoft SharePoint Workflow template, and then click Create as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 Using Visio 2010 to create a SharePoint workflow flowchart.

The thought of using Visio Premium 2010 to create SharePoint workflows, seemed a bit strange at first. Visio is widely used for creating network diagrams, but most wouldn’t consider it a development tool. However, one of the primary features of Visio is creating flowcharts, so it makes perfect sense. Anyone who’s taken an introductory computer programming class knows one of the first lessons is how to create a flowchart. That’s because creating a flowchart is often the first step in writing a program. Because SharePoint workflows are really nothing more than simple programs, is it really such a stretch to use an application that’s designed to create flowcharts to facilitate the creation of SharePoint workflows?

Before using Visio 2010 to create a SharePoint workflow, there are two important things you need to know. First, you won’t be using Visio 2010 to create the workflow in its final form. Instead, you’ll use Visio to create workflow template you can then import into SharePoint Designer where you’ll complete the workflow. Second, this will only work if you have Visio 2010 Premium. The Standard and Professional editions of Visio 2010 don’t support the creation of SharePoint workflows.

Authoring a Workflow

At this point, you’ll be taken to the main Visio screen. Here you can actually begin developing your workflow. If you’ve never used Visio, you’ll have to get used to the process of creating a workflow. The left side of the screen contains several collections (or “stencils) containing various icons (or “master shapes”). The SharePoint Workflow template includes stencils for Action, Conditions, and Workflow Terminator shapes. Drag the shapes onto the Visio drawing and arrange them in such a way that facilitates your workflow.

For a visual example, take a look at the Visio drawing in Figure 2. It shows a simple SharePoint Workflow template, which begins with the Start terminator (the green triangle). After that, there‘s a condition that checks to see if the title field certains  contains values. The field name or the list of keywords doesn’t matter for now. We won’t be able to provide specific values or field names until later. For now, we just need to establish the workflow logic.

Figure 2 A basic SharePoint Workflow ceated in Visio.

You’ll notice in the figure that the condition branches depending on whether specific values were detected. Visio requires that you create a Yes path and a No path for each condition you use in your workflow. This particular workflow ends with the Terminate object, if no matching values are found (the No path). If the keywords are found, the item is deleted and the workflow terminated.

You’ll also see that each object is connected to at least one other object (as shown by the arrows between the objects). These connections are required, but do not happen automatically.  To connect two shapes, drag a shape onto the drawing page and hover over another shape that you want it to connect to. There should be some blue arrow icons displayed around the outer edges of the object. . Drop the shape on the arrow icon to create a connection between the two shapes.

After you’ve created your workflow, you should validate all the steps. Validating a workflow ensures there aren’t any problems that will prevent SharePoint from using it successfully. For example, the validation process will tell you if you’ve disconnected objects within the workflow, or if you’ve forgotten to terminate the workflow.

To validate your workflow, go to the Process tab, and click the Check Diagram button. Hopefully, Visio won’t find any problems with your diagram. If it does, those problems will appear in an Issues window at the bottom of the Visio workspace. Most problems are usually pretty easy to solve: simply double-click the issue and Visio will select the object related to the problem.

The last step in the process is to export your Visio diagram. Go to the Process tab, and click the Export button found on the ribbon. You should now see a dialog box into which you can specify a filename for the drawing you’re exporting. Enter a filename, select the path to which you want to save the exported file. Verify that you’re exporting the file in the Visio Workflow Interchange (*.VWI) format, and click Save.

Introducing the SharePoint Designer

Now that you have a workflow template, we’re ready for the second part of the workflow-creation process. Import the template into SharePoint Designer and turn it into a SharePoint workflow.

SharePoint Designer 2010 is a tool for customizing sites, data sources, workflows, etc. You can make some customizations from within the SharePoint gui, but since SharePoint’s interface is somewhat limited the SharePoint Designer takes SharePoint site customization to the next level.

SharePoint Designer is available for free. You can download it at the following locations:

For 32-bit

For 64-bit

Using SharePoint Designer

Once you’ve downloaded and installed SharePoint Designer 2010, open it and then open the SharePoint site you want to modify. To do so, launch SharePoint Designer 2010, and then click the Open Site button.

You’ll be prompted to specify the site you want to open. Enter your SharePoint site URL and click the Open button. Or, browse to your site, choose Site Actions, and edit the site in SharePoint Designer. When you do, you’ll be taken to the main SharePoint Designer screen, shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3 The SharePoint Designer main screen.

You’ll notice that the list of Site Objects on the left side of the screen contains an object called Workflows. When you click on the Workflows object, you will see a listing for the  built-in workflows.

Since we have created or own workflow template in Visio 2010, we need to import it. To do so, click the Import from Visio button located on the Workflows ribbon. You’ll be prompted to select a Visio drawing to import. Click the Browse button, and then select the drawing that you created earlier and click Open, followed by Next.

At this point, you’ll see a screen prompting you to name the workflow you’re importing. You’re also asked whether you want to import the workflow as a list workflow or a reusable workflow, as shown in Figure 4. The difference is that a list workflow is bound to a specific list or library, whereas a reusable workflow is bound to a content type and can be applied to any list or library.

Figure 4 Choose to Import the Workflow as a List Workflow Or as a Reusable Workflow.

Upon making your selection, click Finish and the workflow will be imported. Once the import process is finished, you will be taken to the Workflow Editor, shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5 The Workflow Editor allows you to make changes to your workflow.

Some Final Prep Work

Before you can use visualization features in conjunction with the workflow you’ve just created, you will have to do a bit of configuration work on your SharePoint Server. Specifically, you must verify that the Visio Web Access feature and the Visio Graphics Service are both active.

To do so, open your SharePoint site and choose the Site Settings command from the Site Actions menu. When the Site Settings page is loaded, click on the Site Collection Features link. Make sure the SharePoint Server Enterprise Site Collection Feature is active. If it isn’t, then click the corresponding Activate button.

Figure 6 Choose your workflow from the list of workflow templates.

Next, open the SharePoint 2010 Central Administration console, and click on the Manage Services on Server link (located in the System Settings section).  Now, verify that Visio Graphics Service is running. If it isn’t, then click on the Corresponding Start button.

The final step in the process is to associate the workflow you’ve created with a list or a library (assuming that you have created a reusable workflow). To do so, simply open your Web browser and navigate to your SharePoint document library, and then click on the Library tab. When you do, you’ll see a ribbon corresponding to the document library. Click on the Workflow Settings button, followed by the Add a Workflow link. You’ll now have the opportunity to add your workflow to the document library, as shown in Figure 6. For more information, see Add a workflow association.

Your new workflow is stored and ready for you to use or share with your colleagues.

Brien Posey*, MVP, is a freelance technical author with thousands of articles and dozens of books to his credit. You can visit Brien’s Web site at brienposey.com.*

Related Content:

• Workflows in SharePoint Server 2010
• Workflows in SharePoint Designer 2010
• Introducing SharePoint Designer 2010
• Workflow Deployment Process (SharePoint 2010)