The fourth part of my SharePoint 2010 developer learning is about SharePoint 2010 workflows. It’s basically available in SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 and offers you to electronically recreate business processes.

This is the fourth part of a series describing my attempt to become a SharePoint 2010 developer using available resources.

Resources

First of all here are the resources I used:

Videos

The first link includes 5 videos and the second link includes 3 videos with Ted Pattison.

• Get Started Developing on SharePoint 2010
• Workflow

MSDN

• Building Block: Workflows

Blog posts

There aren’t many resources where workflows are discussed, aren’t there?

• Overview of Human Workflow in SharePoint 2010
• Workflow Designer in SharePoint Designer 2010
•  SharePoint Designer’s new workflow editor: introduction
• SharePoint Designer’s new workflow editor: keyboard shortcuts

If you have additional resources please drop a message.

Using SharePoint 2010 – Workflows

If you install the Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint tools you can use a wizard to create a workflow in a project.

The wizard asks if you want to create a site or list workflow.

The result is no magic and just changes a property in the workflow definition:

  <Workflow
     Name="Module 7 - Workflows - WorkflowList"
     Description="My SharePoint Workflow"
     Id="156dc921-a648-40db-9004-c506eecc7791"
     CodeBesideClass="Module_7___Workflows.Workflow1.Workflow1"
     CodeBesideAssembly="$assemblyname$">
    <Categories/>
    <MetaData>
      <AssociationCategories>List</AssociationCategories>
       . . .
      <StatusPageUrl>_layouts/WrkStat.aspx</StatusPageUrl>
    </MetaData>
  </Workflow>

The difference can be seen in line 9:

  <Workflow
     Name="Module 7 - Workflows - WorkflowSite"
     Description="My SharePoint Workflow"
     Id="4634e88e-24a8-43c8-9b0d-05996c0d6923"
     CodeBesideClass="Module_7___Workflows.Workflow2.Workflow2"
     CodeBesideAssembly="$assemblyname$">
    <Categories/>
    <MetaData>
      <AssociationCategories>Site</AssociationCategories>
       . . . 
      <StatusPageUrl>_layouts/WrkStat.aspx</StatusPageUrl>
    </MetaData>
  </Workflow>

After selecting the kind of workflow you can choose where you want to attach the workflow if you compile your project and how the workflow should be startet.

The selected attributes a part of the workflow properties and only necessary within your Visual Studio solution. It is not used for deployment at your customer.

Summary

I don’t know if I missed resources but there aren’t many although the subject is very important.

After SharePoint has been deployed in many companies there will be a need for business process besides publishing and document management.

As a developer it’s the same as in the 2007 version: Does it work with SharePoint Designer (Visio) or do I need to implement a workflow? If you need to implement a workflow is not a bad idea to take a look behind the (wizard-) scenes…