Professional SharePoint 2010 Development, Second Edition

13

Workflow

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Prototyping workflows in Visio 2010
• Creating declarative workflows in SharePoint Designer 2010
• Developing custom actions in Visual Studio 2010
• Importing reusable workflows to Visual Studio 2010
• Using association, initiation, and task InfoPath forms in workflows
• Developing site workflows in Visual Studio 2010
• Building Pluggable Workflow Services
• Developing workflow event receivers

The SharePoint 2010 workflow platform is built on the engine that's provided by Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5. The improvements made to this platform allow greater flexibility for creating powerful workflow scenarios.

Think of workflow in SharePoint 2010 in three primary scenarios:

• A workflow model is created as a draft or prototype by a business user in Visio or SharePoint Designer. The business user hands this model off to workflow developers at some point, and they take over in Visual Studio 2010. After the developers take over, they work to complete the workflow, add any required code, and modify it to match the business requirement and their server deployments. All further development on the workflow model is done in Visual Studio 2010.
• A developer builds activities in Visual Studio 2010 (known as SharePoint Designer Actions) for deployment to SharePoint. These activities can be used by a nontechnical person who owns the workflow business logic, and that person puts together the workflow in either SharePoint Designer or Visio.
• A developer builds and implements ...