Using social media to distribute product news is an effective way of marketing your product. All people LIKE’ing a facebook page automatically get news updates from it. Having an automated way of fetching data from a product catalog and placing notes on a facebook wall, could be a neat thing to do. Let’s assume we have this scenario: A company, ContosoElectronicsSuperstore, has a product catalog in SharePoint, with a public facing web site to display their products. In addition to this, the company has a facebook page called ContosoSocial. This FB page is LIKE’d by thousands of fans. When the business manager of ContosoElectronicsSuperstore is changing the price on an item to be lower than its regular price, a note is automatically placed on the ContosoSocial facebook page, traversing out to all that LIKE’s this FB page. This will effectively bring product information out to a large number of potential customers. The FB note contains the following information; Title, Item description, price, company logo and a link back to the public facing web site where the customers can view all the products.

In this blog I will show you how to use workflows to fetch data from a product catalog and paste it on the wall on a facebook page. I will show you how to make this workflow trigger automatically every time an item is edited, and how to post a note on facebook every time the price is lower than the regular price.

I will go through the following in this blog:

1. Creating and running the workflow
2. How  to obtain an access_token for facebook.

Prerequisites:

1. A product catalog is set up in a SharePoint installation

For this example I have created a product catalog called UncategorizedList_000. Sorry about the long and meaningless catalog name. It contains many list columns, but those of interest are: RetPrice, RetAdjustPprice, Title and Retdescription.

1. SharePoint Designer (SPD) installed and coupled to the Site Collection containing the product catalog.
2. A facebook page has to be created.

In this example the page is called ContosoSocial

1. A facebook app has to be created and added to the FB page in point 3.

You create this to get an access_token.

Creating the workflow

We need to create a workflow that:

• Is started automatically when an item is edited, and the price is changed to a lower value
• Fetch item information from the product catalog using lookups
• Place an automatically created message onto facebook.
  • The note has to be unique for every item.          
  • The message shall contain info like title, price, description, image and link back to the ContosoElectronicsSuperstore web site.

And this is how I created the workflow in SharePoint Designer:

I have named this workflow Facebook Publishing Demo. It is of type Reusable workflow.

Let me walk you through the workflow steps.

• It is always nice to start the workflow with a log message. Makes it easier to troubleshoot later.
• The IF statement shall detect whether the new price (RetAdjustprice) is lower than the regular price (RetPrice).

The IF statement is picked from the Condition tab in SPD.  It’s called: IF any value equals any value. Other options than Equals are available, just click on Equals and a drop down menu will appear.

Setting the Value: RetAdjustPrice is the displayed price, while RetPrice is the regular price of an item. When selecting Data Source I choose the product catalog name itself (UncategorizedList_000), instead of Current Item. By doing this you are sure to get access to the list columns for the product catalog. When looking up the catalog directly this way, you will have to specify the Find list Item, by setting the Field=GUID and Value=Current Item:GUID, in order to fetch the right item data from the product catalog. This will enable the workflow to retrieve data from the same item in the product catalog that triggered this workflow. I do the item lookup like this:

• I’ve added a log message for each of the IF outcomes, to easily troubleshoot the workflow later.
• Then I’ve chosen to build up a dictionary, containing the access_token needed to communicate with facebook, and the message to be sent to facebook. Creating the dictionary may be overkill, as we extract the info into local workflow variables later.

This is how we set up the dictionary:

The AccessToken is just a long string of characters. I will come back to how to create this later in this blog.

The Message is created using the String Builder:

I do several item lookups here, using the same method as described earlier in this blog.

• Then I create 2 local workflow variables; ACCESSTOKEN and MESSAGE, with input from the dictionary. These variables will be fed into the http POST call action later.

The reason for this is that I’m not allowed to do dictionary lookups directly inside the http POST call action coming up next.

• The http POST call.

This is the heart of this workflow.  The action  (in SPD) to use is called Call http web service. You only need to specify the “This” part.  You do not need to specify anything for request, response or responseheaders.

The http method is to be set to HTTP POST.

Use the String Builder to build up the URL:

Let me guide you through the details:

The https address is the address to the facebook API for the contososocial page.

Access_token: This is the authentication key you need, to get access to the FB page.

Message: Specifies what you want to display on FB.

Caption: Text to the picture

Picture: Link to a company logo that I would like to follow the message on FB.

• Then another log message is added if the ELSE statement is used instead.

When done, click Publish to save the workflow and deploy it to SharePoint.

We are now done with the creation part of the workflow.

Since the SPD designer is coupled to the Site Collection containing the product catalog, the workflow is deployed correctly into the right Site Collection. And since I’ve been using a reusable workflow I will have to add it manually to the product catalog.

In the correct Site Collection navigate to the product catalog, activate the LIST ribbon, click on Workflow settings => Add workflow.  Select the workflow just created, give it a proper name, select start option: Changing an item will start this workflow, and click NEXT.

The workflow is now activated for the product catalog, and ready to run.

To run it; navigate to the product catalog, select an item, activate the ITEMS ribbon, and click on Edit. Change the RetAdjustprice to a lower value than RetPrice and click Save.

Editing the item will kickstart the workflow. The workflow will compare the RetAdjustPrice against RetPrice: In this case the former is lower than the latter, and the http call will be sent to facebook.

I can then navigate to the facebook page contososocial to observe the end result.

Note: All item details,  company name, facebook page, and web address in this example are fake and only for illustration purposes.

How to obtain an access_token from facebook

In order to place a note on a facebook page, you need to authenticate the message being sent to facebook. I will show you how to obtain an access_token which are valid for 2 months. The idea is to create an App that is associated with/added to a FB page. In that process the owner of the page will accept the permissions required by that App. If permissions are set to publish_stream the App will have access to put notes on the wall for that FB page. Using the App credentials, you can create a user access_token which will be used by the workflow to put the note on FB. Details around how to create FB pages, Apps, authentication, etc can be found at: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/canvas/

1. In facebook.com create a page for your company. In my example I’ve used ContosoSocial.
2. Create a Facebook app at https://developers.facebook.com/apps

The app is created just to get a user access_token.

Be sure to add publish_stream as an extended permission.

1. Add the app to the page you want the workflow to post notes to (in my example contososocial). Navigating to “https://www.facebook.com/add.php?api_key={add your app’s api_key here}&pages” will allow you to choose your page to add the app to.
2. Using the app’s identity, look up user access token for the App you just created. This can be done using Facebook Graph API Explorer tool. Note:This access_token will only be valid for a couple of hours.
3. Extend the user access token by using this URL:

https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?grant_type=fb_exchange_token&client_id=APP_ID&client_secret=APP_SECRET&fb_exchange_token=SHORT_LIVED_ACCESS_TOKEN

This URL will return a long lived access_token. It will be valid for 2 months.  

For verifying the access_token use this debugger: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug

Use the long lived access_token in your workflow.

This blog post will describe how to move a workflow from one environment over to another. This is resolved by exporting the workflow as a template in one environment, and importing the workflow as a solution in the other environment. Such a move is highly useful in the scenarios where workflows are created in a test environment and moved over to a production environment when it's finished. In this example I will be using workflows together with a Products list in a Product catalog site collection

The setup is as follows:

The Test server and Prod server are identical with the exception of having the SPD installed on the Test server.

Prerequisites:

•  It is important that the  list columns are named the same in both environments, or your workflow will have problems doing lookups from the product catalog.
• Only workflows of type «reusable workflow» can be exported and used in other environments.

Blog post content:

 I’m going to show you the following:

1. How to create a reusable workflow.
2. How to create a SharePoint solution package that contains the reusable workflow.
3. How to deploy a SharePoint solution package on a server

How to create a reusable workflow.

On your test server:
Open SharePoint Designer and connect it to the site collection containing your Products list.
Then create a workflow by clicking on Workflows and Reusable Workflow. Give the workflow a name and click OK.

You can now start adding workflow steps to this workflow. See my previous blog post Create a simple workflow in SharePoint Designer that reads from, and writes to the Products list in SharePoint 2013  for details on how to do this.
That workflow reads the Title column from the Products list, modifies it, and writes it back to the Products list.

How to create a SharePoint solution package that contains the reusable workflow.

In order to use this workflow on another server, you have to save this workflow as a SharePoint solution package (.wsp file), and then deploy it as a solution in the other server (Prod server).
To save the workflow in a .wsp format, click on Save as a template. This is only possible for workflows of type Reusable Workflow.

The .wsp file is now located in the Site Asset library in the Site Collection on your Test Server.
Go to Site Content => Site Assets and you will find your .wsp file.
Download a copy of this file to a directory on your computer.

You now have a SharePoint Solution package file (.wsp) that you can deploy on the production server.

How to deploy a SharePoint solution package on a server

On your Production server:

Copy the .wsp file from your computer to a local directory on your Prod server.
In the Site Collection containing your Products list go to Site Settings => Solutions.

 Upload the .wsp file, and activate it.

 Go to Site settings => Manage Site features, and activate the workflow as a feature.

Then go to your Products list => LIST ribbon => Workflow settings => Add a workflow.

On the Add a Workflow page, from the list in Select a workflow template, select your workflow.
Give it a name and click Next.

The workflow is now listed among workflows to be used for this Products list.

The workflow can now be used.

To start the workflow, select an item in the Products list, activate the ITEMS ribbon, and select Workflows.

In the workflow page click on the workflow name to start the workflow.
To verify that this workflow has been run, return to the workflow page by selecting the same item, activating the ITEMS ribbon and selecting the Workflows button.
The workflow will be listed either under Running Workflows or Completed workflows.
Click on the instance of the workflow to see log details. The workflow has ended when it is in the Completed workflows section.
To view the final result, go back to the Products list and verify that the value in the site column Title has changed.

This is the first in a series of blog posts describing how to use workflows together with the Products list in a Product catalog site collection. The purpose of this example is to show you how you can  communicate with a list in SharePoint, and by this give you a building block when creating your own workflows.

In this blog post I will show you step-by-step how to create a simple workflow that will read content from a site column, modify the content, and then write the modified content back to the site column. More precisely, I will read the Title of an item, add the words “New Item !!!” to it, and write the modified name back into the Products list for this item. (“Laptop 14.4W” => “New Item !!! Laptop 14.4W”)

 Prerequisites:

• Workflow Manager Client 1.0  installed and connected to the SharePoint installation
• A Product catalog site collection has been created. In the Products list, you must have at least one item, where the site column "Title" contains some content.
• SharePoint Designer (SPD) is installed.

Create a workflow in SPD:

Start by opening SPD and mapping it to the Product catalog site collection. From the Sites menu, click Open Site, and then insert the address of the Site Collection.

 When entering SPD at a later time, your site collection will be listed under Recent Sites.

Tip: SPD can also be started from within SharePoint. To do this in the Products list, in the LIST ribbon=>Workflow settings=> click the arrow and select “Create a workflow in SharePoint designer” from the list. SPD is then automatically mapped to the correct site collection.

After having mapped SPD to your site collection, the next step is to create a workflow that is associated with the Products list. To do this, click Workflows in the Site objects list to get the right ribbon, then “List workflow”.

Select the appropriate List, in this case “Products”.

Type a suitable name for your workflow and click OK.

You now have an empty workflow, ready to be filled with workflow steps.

Develop the workflow

The workflow is created declarative; hence no programming is needed when using the SharePoint Designer.

The final workflow will look like this.

Let me guide you through the different steps.

• Line 1: It is always nice to start with a log message. This makes Troubleshooting later much easier. Use the Log to history list action.
• Line 2: Reading from the product catalog is achieved with the Set workflow variable action.

Create your own workflow variable of type String, and do a Lookup for the value in the list column Title in the product catalog. Creating this variable is just to show you that I’m able to fetch data from the product catalog. Since SPD is already mapped to your Site collection, “current item” will present all site columns in the “Field from source” drop down window.

• Line 3: Logging “MyTitle” is just to be able to verify (in the logs later) that we have picked up the right data.
• Line 4: Then create a new variable (MyTitle2) of type string. Use the Set workflow variable action again. Under Value use the String Builder to modify the title. In my example I have added some text to the content in the MyTitle variable. Use the “Add or Change Lookup” button to enter the “Lookup for String” UI as shown in step 2.

You now have a workflow variable (MyTitle2) containing your new modified title.

• Line5: Write back to the product catalog by using the Set Field in current item action.

This time the field is a lookup for Site column (Current item:Title), and the value is the Workflow Variable and Parameters: MyTitle2.

• Line 6: All workflows must end with this Go-to statement.

• You can check for workflow errors by clicking on “Check for errors”. This feature will only remind you of major mistakes, like not setting a value for a variable. Don’t be surprised if the workflow doesn’t work for other reasons.

• To keep your workflow, click on Save. The workflow is stored but not activated.

  The workflow is now done.

  How to deploy and activate the workflow for the Products list

   

• Publishing the workflow will deploy it to the SharePoint installation and activated it for the list that you associated the workflow with, in this case, the Products list.  To publish your newly created workflow, click Publish.

To verify that your workflow is deployed and activated for the Products list do the following:

In SharePoint, in your Product catalog site collection, go to the Products list; activate the LIST ribbon => Workflow settings. The workflow will be listed under SharePoint 2013 workflows.

Start the workflow

• Go to the Products list, select an item, activate the ITEMS ribbon and then click on Workflows.

• Activate the workflow by clicking on its name.

After starting the workflow you will return to the product catalog UI.

• To see the status of the workflow, return to the Workflow page as described in the previous step. Internal status will show the status of the workflow.

Note: The workflow has completed its task, and we can already see that the title has been modified to “New Item !!! Adventure….” As planned.

• If you want see the logged status messages that you put in your workflow, click on the workflow name, and you will see the workflow details. This is useful during troubleshooting.

• Verify the final result by going back to the product catalog and observe that the title of the appropriate item has changed.

Other starting options:

If you need to start the workflow automatically there are options for this as well.

• Go to the product catalog => LIST ribbon => Workflow settings: click on the workflow name. you will now be presented with the following starting options: