Inroduce SharePoint 2013 Out Of The Box Workflow in detail

What’s workflow

Workflow ismainly described as one between managing personal, Office, Department or theentire company processes that interact. Some work completed depends on manypeople or systems. Because these cyclical dependencies are identified in corporatebusiness processes occur. Running business processes throughout the company areoften similar, even in different types of companies.

For example: A Cost Management Reportbusiness process

This follow Figure 1.1 is the most basicbusiness logic, it determines how the employee claims and determine who haveapproval.

Figure 1.1

Advantage:You can easily see the workflow will help you manage and automate thebusiness processes of the company, reducing human dependence on enterprise asfar as possible, and work as effectively as possible.

The Business Need

Many of our clients use SharePoint forEmployee, Customer, or Member Portals. Not surprisingly, there are typicallynumerous business processes being supported that could really benefit from sometype of automated workflow. This might include scenarios like:

• Vacation and leave requests and approvals
• New employee account and hardware/software approvals and provisioning
• Project and budget tracking and approvals
• New site provisioning
• Customer self service
• Others

Windows Workflow Foundation Architecture

WFframework is based on three main services: hosting (first layer), the runtimelayer (second layer), and programming layer (layer).

1.Hosting layer

2.Runtime layer

3.Programming layer

Note:Youcan say that SharePoint workflow sits at the top layer for service. Out of thebox workflow, the workflow in SharePoint Designer, Visual Studio workflow, aswell as examples of our expense report will build on the top of the platform.

Available Toolsets

In order tomeet business needs for workflow within SharePoint, we have traditionally hadthree options available to us:

• Configure out-of-the-box SharePoint workflow
• Implement workflow using SharePoint Designer
• Implement workflow with custom code using Visual Studio

Notes:There are also other tools and methods to design the workflow, such as, Visio,InfoPath and so on.

Workflow Object and Workflow Type

Workflow object

SharePoint workflow is object via a through a series ofactions relating to the automation of business processes. The SharePoint objectis a file or a notice, or an item in the task list.

For example, when youinstall a SharePoint approval workflow a workflow. You can use this workflow touse files in document libraries, and specify who needs to approve the file,occurred before another action.

1.List

2.InfoPath Form

3.Content Type

4.SharePoint Site

Workflow type

Thework flow from one to another is performed in two ways. A workflow is asequential workflow perform the work in accordance with the order, another is astate machine, which does not have a specific order. A sequential workflow isalways forward progress, never to return to the previous step

SequentialWorkflow:

Figure 1.2

Explanation:

- It looks very simplelike flow chart.

- Steps within theworkflow execute sequentially, one after another in the particular order.

- A sequential workflowalways progresses forward, never going back to a previous step.

- Sequential workflowsare definitely much easier to design and maintain.

State Machines Workflow:

The other hand, statemachines, from one State to another, until moving the logical conclusions ofcompleted workflow.

For example: Error in the bug tracking process tracking in computerprograms

Figure 1.3

Thestep:

1.When the workflow starts

2.The error may be placed in a pending state

3.where waiting for the developer assigned to the error and start working

4.Since then, the developer began work, and fix it, set a final error

5.When an error is final repair status, test results confirmed

6.If they find that it is not is not afinal, they will fall back to the suspended state

7.This ability to travel back in time to a previous state using a statemachine workflow.

Explanation:

- A sequential workflowexecutes in no particular order and these are based on events likeOnTaskCreated, OnTaskDeleted etc.

- A sequential workflowmoves from one state to another until the logic concludes the workflow hascompleted.

- Compared to Sequentialworkflows State machine workflows are difficult to design and maintain.

- In order to move toanother event, the workflow needs to meet another state.

- The workflow doesn’treally have to end. It can stay in the same state for weeks.

Notes: Visual studioprovides both Sequential workflow and State Machine workflow. But in SharePointdesigner you can only make sequential workflows.

The Change in SharePoint 2013

The key enhancements to workflows in SharePoint 2013 include the following.For a more detail overview of what’s new in workflows for SharePoint 2013.

·Enhanced connectivity to enable cloud-basedexecution of workflows. In fact, there is 100 percent parity in SharePoint 2013between on-premises and Office 365 -based workflows.

·There is full interoperability in SharePoint2013 with SharePoint 2010 workflows, which is enabled by using theSharePointworkflow interop.

·Enhanced authoring expressiveness by usingSharePoint events and action, web services, and classic programming structures,all in a declarative, no-code environment.

·Scalability and robustness that is consistentwith requirements for Office 365 and the Cloud App Model.

·Enhanced connectivity to promote highlyfunctional integrated systems. You can call and control your workflows from anyexternal system. Additionally, your workflow can make web service calls to anystream or data source using common protocols like HTTP, SOAP, the Open Dataprotocol (OData), and Representational State Transfer (REST).

·Enhanced authoring capabilities for thenon-developer in SharePoint Designer 2013, and the ability to compose workflowlogic in Visio.

·Enhanced, and yet simplified, workflow developmentin Visual Studio, including support for custom workflow actions, rapiddevelopment in a declarative environment, single-step deployment, and supportfor developing apps for SharePoint.

·Full support for workflow-powered apps forSharePoint, where workflows function as the middle tier for business processmanagement.

Notes: With SharePoint 2013 comes a new way of doingworkflows.Installing SharePoint Server 2013 gives you the samefunctionality as a SharePoint 2010 workflow out of the box, however to make useof the much greater feature set that is workflows in SharePoint 2013 you needto install the newWorkflow Manager.

The SharePoint 2010 Workflowplatform has been carried forward to SharePoint Server 2013. All of yourworkflows that were built by using SharePoint Server 2010 will continue to workin SharePoint Server 2013.

In SharePoint Server 2010 theworkflow engine installed automatically with the product. This continues to bethe case with the SharePoint 2010 Workflow platform in SharePoint Server 2013.If you simply install SharePoint Server 2013 and do not install and configureWorkflow Manager then you will have a nearly identical experience with buildingworkflows as you did in SharePoint Server 2010.

Figure: Architectural changes inSharePoint Workflow

SharePoint 2013 Out-Of-Box Workflow

1.Three-stateworkflow:
In the Three-state workflow there are 3 states: Active, Ready for Review andComplete.
The Three-state workflow is leveraged on issue tracking lists in SharePoint.But we can also be customized and used in other lists or in custom SharePointlists.

2.Approval workflow:
This is one of the most popular workflow in SharePoint. This workflow helps inapproving or denying SharePoint content. The submission process can either beserial, where the order of approvers is predetermined, or parallel, where anyapprover can approve at any time.

3.Collect Feedback workflow:
This workflow helps in taking feedback from specified members. Once thefeedback is compiled and the submitter is notified.

4.Collect Signaturesworkflow:
The Collect Signatures workflow will require each approver to place a digitalsignature on the document. This workflow can only be initiated from the Officeclient, such as Microsoft Office Word. It cannot be initiated from the browserlike other workflows can.

5.Disposition Approvalworkflow:
This workflow allows you to manage document expiration and retention. This enablesyou to decide what will happen to documents when they expire. Like you candelete documents after expiry or you can achieve these documents.

6.Translation Managementworkflow:
This workflow helps translating office documents from one language to another. Thisworkflow works with two list types: a Translation Management Library and atranslators list. A document that needs to be translated is uploaded into theTranslation Management Library, and translators in the translators list receivetasks to start translating the source document into their respective languages.When all the translation tasks are completed, the Translation Managementworkflow is completed.

Introduce three-status workflow

Inthe Three-state workflow there are 3 states: Active, Ready for Review andComplete.
The Three-state workflow is leveraged on issue tracking lists in SharePoint.But we can also be customized and used in other lists or in custom SharePointlists.

The three different status occur in the order. They can benamed anything you like you name, but there is always an initial state,intermediate state and the final State. Each of these States representdifferent stages in the workflow, each stage is a transition between States.

As the transition between State, assign the custom workflowtask, send a custom e-mail message. Figure 1.1 shows the task sequence.

Figure 1.1

At first, you have to understand theTask List.

The task list is a feature in SharePoint, it allows you toassign tasks to members of your team. These tasks are stored in a SharePointlist and assigned to the task you can navigate the list, and edit or complete atask. For example, task list can be used in tracking defects (bug) in softwareor maintenance requests to facilities management Department.

This is the detail progress

Demo the three-status workflow

Demo detail to Link my blog: http://blog.csdn.net/tristan_dong/article/details/8270560