Meeting # 76 Meeting # 76 Welcome to the Minnesota SharePoint User Group March 9 th, 2011 Workflow and Business Process Automation Phil Jirsa, Veasnar Yem, Raymond Mitchell

Meeting # 76 Meeting # 76 Agenda Introductions Crawl, Walk, and Run Out of the Box Workflows SPD Workflows + Visio 2010 Break Visual Studio Workflows 3rd Party Options

Meeting # 76 Meeting # 76 User Group Goal / Objectives Develop and support a local community focused on Microsoft SharePoint Technologies Educate user group members about SharePoint Technologies Transfer knowledge within the community Communicate best practices Introduce new products / solutions

Meeting # 76 Meeting # 76 Introductions – MNSPUG Sponsors Avtex ( Technology consulting company Practice area focused on SharePoint Benchmark Learning ( Training on many technologies Microsoft ( Wrox Press (

Meeting # 76 Meeting # 76 Website for user group SharePoint resource documents SharePoint resource links RSS Feeds Meeting Schedule Past User Group Presentations

Meeting # 76 Meeting # 76 Social Networking Linked In group – The most interactive… includes job postings… – Facebook group – and #MNSPUG

Meeting # 76 Meeting # 76 Upcoming Schedule Next Meeting April 13 th 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM Microsoft’s Bloomington Office Topic: TBD Check for updates! Ongoing Schedule 2 nd Wednesday of every month 9:00 to 11:30 am Microsoft’s Bloomington Office

Meeting # 76 Local Events SharePoint Saturday – April 9, 2011 Normandale Community College Schedule, Sessions Details available at:

Meeting # 76

Meeting # 76 Conferences Best Practices Conference – Nowish La Jolla, CA SharePoint Connections – March 27-30th, Orlando, FL TechEd, North America – May 16-19th, Atlanta, GA

Meeting # 76

Meeting # 76 Books

Meeting # 76 Quick Intro Raymond Mitchell – Senior SharePoint Consultant – Author – Dad & Packers Fan

Meeting # 76 Quick Intro Phil Jirsa – SharePoint Consultant – MCTS – WSS and MOSS Development – Water Ski Fanatic

Meeting # 76 Quick Intro Vish Yem – SharePoint Consultant – MCTS: WSS and MOSS Development – Dog owner

Meeting # 76 Crawl, Walk, Run…

Meeting # 76 Business Process & Workflow Replace manual business processes or steps with automated steps and flows

Meeting # 76 Business Process & Workflow Crawl: Introduce simple list and InfoPath forms Use out of the box workflows

Meeting # 76 Business Process & Workflow Walk: Introduce SharePoint Designer workflows Introduce 3rd Party workflow tools Use Visio Services to visualize business processes

Meeting # 76 Business Process & Workflow Run: Develop more robust workflows,.NET workflows, integrated systems Custom.NET Actions and Conditions for SharePoint Designer

Meeting # 76 Business Process & Workflow Other Notes: Don’t attempt to fully automate every step of every business process. Evaluate which steps are appropriate and stop there. Take the time to analyze potential ROI from process automation

Meeting # 76 Business Process Automation You already have it. What is the #1 tool?

Meeting # 76 Why Workflow? One Truth Flexibility Auditability

Meeting # 76 SharePoint Workflow OOB SharePoint SharePoint Designer + Visio Visual Studio

Meeting # 76 Basic Workflow Capabilities Start Workflow Manually or Automatically Visibility into Running Workflows Collection of Historical Workflow Data – Status of approval, errors,… Stop (or Terminate) a Running Workflow Tight Integration with Office

Meeting # 76 Understanding The Workflow Timeline Association – When a workflow is associated with a list – Data can be associated with the workflow Initiation – When the workflow is first started on a list item – Data can be associated with the instance of the workflow Running – Status page reflects state of the workflow – User primarily interacts via Tasks Termination – End an instance of a workflow Remove Association AssociationInitiationRunningTermination Remove Association

Meeting # 76 Out of the Box New Site Level Workflows Customizable with SharePoint Designer Visualization with Visio 2010 SharePoint Designer Parallel Execution Paths Reusable Workflow Visualization/Design with Visio Exportable to Visual Studio Visual Studio Workflow Built-in Deployment/Debugging Tools Workflow Events Pluggable Workflow Services

Meeting # 76 Lists and Libraries Lists Approval Collect Feedback Collect Signatures Disposition Approval Three State* Translation Management Out of the Box * SharePoint Foundation

Meeting # 76 Out-of-the-Box Workflows DEMO

Meeting # 76 SharePoint Designer 2010 Redesigned for SharePoint 2010 New UI Only Compatible with SharePoint 2010

Meeting # 76 SharePoint Designer 2010 Create Reusable Workflows Import/Export to Visio New Workflow Designer Wizard

Meeting # 76 SPD + Visio 2010 DEMO

Meeting # 76 BREAK Sorry… BYO Coffee and Donuts today.

Meeting # 76 Custom.NET Workflow Bring in the Reinforcements! You are here because: – Missing Specific Feature – SharePoint Designer Missing Action – Custom Data or Actions Needed – Existing Windows Workflow Investment – State Machine Workflow Requirement – Expose the Full Power of.NET Word of Warning – There is a steep learning curve

Meeting # 76 Custom.NET Workflow – The Platform Windows Workflow Foundation Its not just a SharePoint Platform – Built into.NET 3.0

Meeting # 76 Workflow – Platform Implications Workflow a Core.NET Feature – Workflow can be ‘hosted’ anywhere – SharePoint was Microsoft’s first host (CRM 4 uses it now too) Custom applications can host it as well Standardized Format – XML based file format (XOML) Widespread Availability

Meeting # 76 Visual Studio DEMO

Meeting # 76 3 rd Party Options

Meeting # 76 3 rd Party Options Two major players

Meeting # 76 3 rd Party Options Expand workflows beyond SharePoint Designer Implement workflow logic without code Rich visual designer from SharePoint

Meeting # 76 K2 blackpoint Larger installation footprint Runs outside of SharePoint – Process Portals – K2 Worklist Maintains data within own database – Detailed reporting Error handling SmartObjects K2 Studio – Alternate designer

Meeting # 76 Nintex Small installation footprint Start in SharePoint, stay in SharePoint Document assembly and conversion User Defined Actions (UDA) Lazy Approval Workflow change approval

Meeting # 76 Nintex DEMO

Meeting # 76 Recap Factors to consider – IT Limitations – Requirements – Functionality – Budget

Meeting # 76 Paul Andrew - SharePoint SharePoint MSDN - us/sharepoint/default.aspxhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/sharepoint/default.aspx K2 – Nintex – References

Meeting # 76 Meeting # 76 Q & A

Meeting # 76 Meeting # 76 Thanks for coming!