Office SharePoint Designer 2007 Overview
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To aid in the rapid design and deployment of workflows, the development process in a declarative rules-based, code-free workflow editor, such as Office SharePoint Designer 2007, is much simpler than that in the Visual Studio 2005 Designer for Windows Workflow Foundation.
When you develop workflows for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 using Office SharePoint Designer 2007, you follow these basic steps:
Author your workflow by assembling and configuring the predefined activities and conditions available in Office SharePoint Designer 2007.
Have Office SharePoint Designer 2007 automatically generate ASP.NET forms for workflow initiation and any custom task in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, if necessary.
Customize the workflow forms, if necessary.
Office SharePoint Designer 2007 automatically generates the workflow definition template and deploys of the workflow to the specified list.
Authoring Workflows Using Office SharePoint Designer
Office SharePoint Designer 2007 uses a wizard-driven interface that enables users to assemble sequential workflows from predefined activities. Users select activities from a predetermined list, and configure those activities using the Office SharePoint Designer 2007 interface. These activities can be the same activities that are present in the Visual Studio 2005 Designer for Windows Workflow Foundation; there is no difference in activities between the two tools.
In Office SharePoint Designer 2007, however, each activity appears as an action, represented by a sentence that contains variables that the user can configure using drop-down menus and lookup dialog boxes. Users can also select conditions, which are configurable conditional clauses that direct the flow of the workflow.
As the user is selecting and configuring conditions and actions in the workflow interface, Office SharePoint Designer 2007 generates the two files that actually represent the workflow class:
The workflow markup file, which contains markup language that describes the activities included in the workflow.
The workflow rules file, which contains the business logic of the workflow in declarative rules form, rather than as code.
Adding Custom Activities and Conditions
Because workflow authors in Office SharePoint Designer 2007 cannot create custom activities for use in their workflows, they are limited to the activities and conditions that the developer makes available on the ”safe list” (which should also be approved by a server administrator) that appears in Office SharePoint Designer 2007. Developers can create custom activities and conditions, and make them available on the safe list.
A condition is a custom assembly with a static method that when called, evaluates condition and returns a Boolean value.
To make activities and conditions available on the safe list:
Create the activity or condition, compile it as a strong-named assembly, and deploy it to the global assembly cache.
Add the activity or condition to the action safe list in the web.config file.
In the WSS.Actions file, located in the workflow folder, add rules and parameters for the sentence that represents the activity or condition in the Office SharePoint Designer 2007 user interface. This is markup language that specifies how the activity or condition appears and performs in the interface, because this information is not present in the activity or condition assembly itself.
For more information about deploying custom activities and conditions, see the Office SharePoint Designer 2007 help.
Generating ASP.NET Forms in Office SharePoint Designer
You can create an initiation stage for your workflow in Office SharePoint Designer 2007. If you do, Office SharePoint Designer 2007 uses ASP.NET to automatically generate an initiation form according to your initiation specifications.
Similarly, you can create custom Office SharePoint Server tasks for your workflow. Again, Office SharePoint Designer 2007 automatically generates an ASP.NET form for the task, according to your specifications.
These ASPX forms are stored on the SharePoint site with the workflow source files. You can open and customize them as you would any other ASPX form.
Deploying Workflows with Office SharePoint Designer
Because you are authoring against a specific list, the deployment of workflows you create in Office SharePoint Designer 2007 is a much simpler process than workflows you create in the Visual Studio 2005 Designer for Windows Workflow Foundation. Office SharePoint Designer 2007 deploys the workflow to the specified list.
Note
Office SharePoint Designer 2007 offers no custom debugging functionality.
Deleting a workflow authored in Office SharePoint Designer 2007 from a list does not delete the actual source files used to compile that workflow from memory. The workflow is no longer associated with the list, but the source files remain stored in the workflow document library on the site.
In the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 object model, workflows authored in Office SharePoint Designer 2007 are indistinguishable in appearance from workflows authored in the Visual Studio 2005 Designer for Windows Workflow Foundation.
See Also
Concepts
Workflow Development for Windows SharePoint Services
Workflow Development Tools Comparison