Workflows

Workflows – What are workflows? Much of the work in any enterprise is done using business processes, which depend on the flow of information or documents and the participation of information workers to complete tasks that contribute to their workgroup's decisions or deliverables. Examples of business processes that could be facilitated by workflows include:

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Contract approval Guiding a proposed contract among members of an organization who must approve or reject it.

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Expense report Managing the submission of an expense report and associated receipts, reviewing it, approving it, and reimbursing the submitter.

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Call center Guiding the progress of a technical support incident as it is opened by a customer, investigated by a support engineer, routed to technical experts, resolved, and added to a knowledge base.

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Interview loop Managing the process of interviewing a job candidate. This includes scheduling and tracking interview appointments, rolling up interview feedback as it accumulates, making feedback available to subsequent interviewers, and facilitating the hire/no hire decision.

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Content publishing Managing the approval of the publication of content on an enterprise's Internet presence site.

Problems faced in current scenario One of the problems faced by many IT departments when implementing automated or people-centric business processes is that the processes do not integrate with the way people work. Eg – 1. For a people-centric business process to be effective, it must be integrated into the familiar, everyday tools and applications used in the workplace, so that it becomes part of the daily routine of information workers.

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In the electronic workplace, this includes integration with e-mail, calendars, task lists, collaboration Web sites, and client applications such as Microsoft Office Outlook, Word etc

In Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, automated, people-centric business processes are implemented by workflows. Office SharePoint Server 2007 includes the following standard workflows that address primary business needs:

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Collect Feedback

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Sends a document for review. The author chooses the reviewers, sends instructions, and can check the workflow's progress.

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Reviewers receive email notification and are assigned a task with a link to the document to review.

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Participants can optionally delegate their tasks or decline altogether.

Approval

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Sends a document for approval. Approval is often a prerequisite to another document management task, such as publishing a document to a Web site or submitting a business proposal to a client.

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As with the Collect Feedback workflow, authors choose approvers, send instructions, and track workflow status. By default, Approval is a serial workflow?— the order in which approvers view the document is specified by the author. (By contrast, Collect Feedback is a parallel workflow? — reviewers can provide feedback in any order.)

Disposition Approval

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Collect Signatures

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Routes a document to a set of participants who must sign the document.

Translation

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Manages the translation of a document into one or more languages.

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The workflow creates placeholder documents and tracks translation tasks for each language version of the source document.

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If the source document changes, the workflow will assign tasks to update the translation versions.

Issue Tracking

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Manages document expiration and disposition by allowing participants to approve the disposition of expired documents.

Routes an issue to team members for resolution.

East Asian Document Approval

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Routes a document for approval using digital signature stamps and a group-oriented consensus process. ( Note – This is available only in East Asian product versions and language packs).

In Office SharePoint Server 2007, site designers can associate workflows with libraries, lists, or content types to make them available to run on documents or list items. A workflow's progress is recorded in a workflow history list and workflow tasks are assigned to participants using a tasks list, so that they become part of the daily routine of information workers,

Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Workflow -

Workflows are tightly integrated into Office SharePoint Server 2007 and 2007 Microsoft Office system, enabling information workers to easily participate in them. The following tasks can be performed both from the Web-based Office SharePoint Server 2007 interface or from 2007 Office release client programs:

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Viewing the workflows available to run on a document or list item.

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Initiating a workflow.

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Viewing and launching a workflow task.

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Completing a workflow task and filling the task completion form.

Users can also create custom workflows using Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007. Each workflow created by using Office SharePoint Designer 2007 can be associated with a single list or library. Office SharePoint Designer 2007 includes a visual workflow design environment and a set of workflow actions that users can add to workflows without having to write source code, including:

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Setting list metadata

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Creating, copying, deleting, or changing list items (including documents)

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Checking items in or out

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Pausing, starting, or stopping the workflow

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Sending email messages

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Setting the moderation status of an item

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Setting an item's metadata

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Assigning tasks

Using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, you can create custom workflow actions that can be made available in Office SharePoint Designer 2007.

Planning workflows: next steps Planning workflows is best done in context. To continue planning workflows in the context of document management, forms, or publishing, see one of the following topics:

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Plan workflow for form templates

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Plan workflows for document management

Plan workflow for form templates There are three contexts for workflow planning in relation to forms:

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Custom workflow form templates— The form template is included in a custom workflow package to gather information as a part of the workflow.

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Form template approval workflows — The workflow is used to approve a form template, as it would be to approve any other type of page or document in a library.

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Workflows launched from a form — The workflow is bound to the Submit or Save button on the form template. When the user clicks the button in a form-filling session, the workflow is launched.

Custom workflow form templates You can upload a custom workflow package that includes workflows and InfoPath form templates to Office SharePoint Server 2007. When a workflow uses a form template as an interface to gather data during the workflow process, these form templates will be integrated into the application experience via an InfoPath Forms Services web part. These server-side workflow form templates are specific to the workflow, and cannot be activated to a site collection or added to a document library. These form templates are stored in the farm forms library, and must be uploaded by an administrator. Office SharePoint Server 2007 includes several form templates that are specifically for use in out of the box workflows. These form templates cannot be used outside of these workflows.

Form template approval workflows You can use a workflow to review or approve a form template in the same way you can use workflows to route any document or page for review.

Workflows launched from a form InfoPath Forms Services can be used to launch workflows using the submit button in a form. For example, you can use browser-enabled form templates in a workflow that routes documents from person to person to complete their document management tasks, such as reviewing documents, approving their publication, or managing their disposition. Additionally, administrator-approved form templates can be designed to initiate a workflow. For example, when a form template used for collecting customer information is submitted, it could start a workflow to notify the appropriate personnel and require action within a given time frame. If you will deploy form templates that trigger workflows, you should consider the following:

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Workflows need to be enabled for the site collections to which the form template will be deployed. If workflows are not enabled for a site collection, a workflow-enabled form template will generate errors on the server when it is submitted.

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You should ensure that the workflow exists and is enabled in the production environment. A form template designer will typically be designing a form template against a development environment which may have workflows and other custom features that have not been deployed to the production system.

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Ensure that the workflow is configured to work the same way in the production environment as it does in the development environment.

Plan workflows for document management In document management, use workflows to route documents from person to person to complete their document management tasks, such as reviewing documents, approving their publication, or managing their disposition. Also, use custom workflows to move documents from one site and library to another. For example, you can design a workflow

to copy a document from one site to another when the document is scheduled to be archived. Office SharePoint Server 2007 includes out of the box workflows that address the following document management needs:

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Collect Feedback - Sends a document for review.

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Approval –Sends a document for approval often as a prerequisite to publishing it.

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Disposition Approval – Manages document expiration and disposition .

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Collect Signatures – Routes a document for signatures.

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Translation – Manages the translation of a document into one or more languages.

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East Asian Document Approval – Routes a document for approval using stamp signatures and a group-oriented consensus process.

Associate a workflow with a content type when you want to make that workflow available whenever the content type is in use. Eg - A purchase order content type could require approval by a manager before completing the transaction. To ensure that the approval workflow is always available when a purchase order is initiated, create a purchase order content type and associate the approval workflow with it. Then add the purchase order content type to any document libraries in which purchase orders will be stored. To plan workflows for your document management solution, 

analyze each document content type you plan to implement and identify the business processes that need to be available to run on content of that type

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Then identify out-of-the-box or custom workflows that you will need to make available for that content.

Here is a sample table analyzing workflows for a contract content type: Contract Process

Contract Workflow

Review drafts

Collect Feedback

Get manager's and legal counsel's approval

Approval

Resolve open issues

Issue Tracking

Get signatures

Collect Signatures