Visual Studio or 3rd party SharePoint workflow tools?

Paolo Pialorsi – paolo@pialorsi.com – PiaSys.com

About me

• Project Manager, Consultant, Trainer• About 50 Microsoft certification

exams passed, including MC(S)M• MVP Office 365• Author of 10 books about XML,

SOAP, .NET, LINQ, and SharePoint• Speaker at main IT conferences

worldwide

Workflow in SharePoint 2010

• Coupled to SharePoint• Available both in SP Foundation and Server• Declarative or code-based• Key missing features:• Capabilities• Scalability• Availability• Cloud-ready

Workflow in SharePoint 2013

• Decoupled from SharePoint• Available in SharePoint Server only• Markup based and declarative only

• No code, or no “direct” code …• Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2013 improved support

• Cloud-ready/Cloud-based, or on-premises• SharePoint app-oriented• Scalable and available• Secure and safe• Extensible

Workflow Architecture

SharingContentEvents People

Visu

al S

tudi

o

Shar

ePoi

nt D

esig

ner

SharePoint 20132010 WF

_API (REST OM)

Workflow Services Manager

Service Bus

Instances Interop

Deployment Messaging

WF Service Application Proxy

Workflow Manager

OAuth

Access Control

Wor

kflow

Clie

nt

How to create a real workflow

• Business Case: Leave Request• State Machine Workflow -> Human Interaction• Multiple Approval Steps, using SharePoint Tasks• Custom Task Forms• Custom Input and Output arguments

• Let’s see the overall workflow design• Let’s create it from scratch!

3rd party workflow tools:

• Many solutions on the market(Bamboo, Agile Point, Datapolis, Nintex, K2…)• Not as extensive as Visual Studio• But with no need to code… and faster!

Let’s pick one to prove it!

Thanks!