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Introducing the Pageflow Sample

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  • Most people think of workflows as a tool to represent and automate back-end business processes. Back-end business processes normally require some user interaction but their main purpose is not to drive the user experience or manage the UI. However, there is a growing type of application that leverages workflow as a tool to drive the user interaction and drive the user experience of an interactive process. This type of technology is called page flow.

  • Last year at TechEd, we showed off some bits we had been working on internally that were designed to make that possible, the ability to model the user interaction of an application using workflow. This approach provides developers the ability to continue managing the complexity of their application in a structure and scalable manner. It turned out that the code we showed at TechEd wasn't going to end up in any of the product releases, so the dev team requested permission to release that code as a sample of how one can implement a generic navigation framework using WF that can support multiple UI technologies (i.e. ASP.NET and WPF).  This year, I just finished giving a talk showing this off and talking about how it will be available today!

  • Thanks go to Shelly Guo, the developer and Israel Hilerio, the PM who had worked on this feature, and to Jon Flanders for providing packaging and quality control

  • Now for the good stuff, download the bits from here!

  • Navigate to setup.exe and run the setup, this will copy the sample projects and the source code for the sample, as well as some new visual studio project templates.

  • Now, let's open up a sample project, so navigate to the samples directory and open the ASPWorkflow sample, this will show off both an ASP.NET Front end as well as a WPF Controller (you can actually use the two together). Let's get to the good stuff right away, and open up the workflow file.

  • Wow… what's going on here? It kind of looks like a state machine, but not really. What has been done here is to create a new base workflow type. Things like SequentialWorkflow and StateMachineWorkflow aren't the only ways to write workflows, they are just two common patterns of execution. A NavigatorWorkflow type has been created (and you can inspect the source and the architecture document to see what this does) and a WorkflowDesigner has been created for it as well (again, this source is available as a guide for those of you who are creating your own workflow types).

  • Each of the activities you see on the diagram above is an InteractionActivity, representing the interaction between the user (via the UI technology of their choosing) and the process. A nice model is to think of the InteractionActivity as mapping to a page within a UI. The output property is the information that is sent to that page (a list of orders or addresses to display) and the input is the information that is received from the page when the user clicks "submit". The InteractionActivity is a composite activity, allowing one to place other activities within the activity to be executed when input is received. The interesting property of the InteractionActivity is the Transitions collection. By selecting this and opening its designer, we are presented with the following dialog:

  • This allows us to specify n-transitions from this InteractionActivity or "page" to other InteractionActivities. And we can specify this via a WF activity condition. This way, we could forward orders greater than $1000 to a credit verification process, or orders containing fragile goods through a process to obtain insurance from a shipper. What's cool about this, my page does not know about that process, it just says "GoForward" and my process defines what comes next. This de-couples the pages from the logic of your process.

  • We then need to wire things up in config:

  •  <configSections>
<section name="NavigationManagerSettings" 
type="Microsoft.Samples.Workflow.UI.NavigationManagerConfigSection, Microsoft.Samples.Workflow.UI, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=40B940EB90393A19"/>
<section name="AspNavigationSettings" 
type="Microsoft.Samples.Workflow.UI.Asp.AspNavigationConfigSection, Microsoft.Samples.Workflow.UI, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=40B940EB90393A19"/>
</configSections>

  • …

  •  <NavigationManagerSettings StartOnDemand="false">
  <Workflow mode="Compiled" value="ASPUIWorkflow.Workflow1, ASPUIWorkflow"/>
  <!--<Workflow mode="XOML" value="WebSite/XAMLWorkflow.xoml" rulesFile="WebSite/XAMLWorkflow.rules" />-->
  <Services>
    <add type="System.Workflow.Runtime.Hosting.DefaultWorkflowCommitWorkBatchService, System.Workflow.Runtime, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
    <add type="System.Workflow.Runtime.Hosting.SqlWorkflowPersistenceService, System.Workflow.Runtime, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" ConnectionString="Initial Catalog=WorkflowStore;Data Source=localhost;Integrated Security=SSPI;" UnloadOnIdle="true"/>
  </Services>
</NavigationManagerSettings>
<AspNavigationSettings>
  <PageMappings>
    <add bookmark="Page1" location="/WebSite/Default.aspx"/>
    <add bookmark="Page2" location="/WebSite/Page2.aspx"/>
    <add bookmark="Page3" location="/WebSite/Page3.aspx"/>
    <add bookmark="Page4" location="/WebSite/Page4.aspx"/>
    <add bookmark="Page5" location="/WebSite/Page5.aspx"/>
    <add bookmark="LastPage" location="/WebSite/LastPage.aspx"/>
  </PageMappings>
  <ExceptionMappings>
    <add type="Microsoft.Samples.Workflow.UI.WorkflowNotFoundException" location="/WebSite/ErrorPage.aspx"/>
    <add type="Microsoft.Samples.Workflow.UI.WorkflowCanceledException" location="/WebSite/ErrorPage.aspx"/>
    <add type="System.ArgumentException" location="/WebSite/ErrorPage.aspx"/>
    <add type="System.Security.SecurityException" location="/WebSite/ErrorPage.aspx"/>
  </ExceptionMappings>
</AspNavigationSettings>

  •  

  • Finally, let's look inside an ASP.NET page and see what we need to do to interact with the process:

  •  AspNetUserInput.GoForward("Submit", userInfo, this.User);

  • This code is specifying the action and is submitting a userInfo object (containing various information gathered from the page) to the InteractionActivity (in this case, it submits to the Page2 InteractionActivity). If we look at what we've configured as the Input for this InteractionActivity, we see the following, which we can then refer to in the transition rules in order to make decisions about where to go next:

  • Plenty of other stuff we could talk about here, support for back button, persistence, etc and I could continue to ramble on about this in another record-length blog post, but I will stop here for now. I will continue to blog about this, look forward to hearing any and all types of feedback, and what you'd be interested in seeing in this. Moving forward, there aren't any formal plans around this, but if there is enough interest in the community, we could get it created as a project on codeplex. If that sounds intriguing either contact me through this blog, leave a comment so that I can gauge the interest in such a scenario.

  • Go, grab the bits!  And, if you have feedback, please contact me.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    June 07, 2007
    For designing and controlling the page flow through an application, Java-based platforms can take advantage

  • Anonymous
    June 07, 2007
    I'm going to be confused. During the last three days we've seen: Acropolis : a set of tools to make it

  • Anonymous
    June 07, 2007
    微軟負責 Workflow Foundation 技術推廣的專家 Matt Winkler，日前在 Matt Winkler's blog 提供了一套整合 Workflow Foundation 與 ASP.NET

  • Anonymous
    June 07, 2007
    Finally access to the stuff =)

  • Anonymous
    June 08, 2007
    S-au intamplat destul de multe in ultima vreme in ceea ce priveste "clientii" Windows: Avem o noua versiune

  • Anonymous
    June 08, 2007
    Awesome presentation yesterday.  Glad you got the bits posted. Look forward to leveraging your teams great work.

  • Anonymous
    June 08, 2007
    Introducing the Pageflow Sample

  • Anonymous
    June 08, 2007
    I couldn't help but chuckle at the installer for the WF-based ASP.NET Pageflow sample. It first asked

  • Anonymous
    June 08, 2007
    I came across this cool example of using WF to drive ASP.NET page flow. http://blogs.msdn.com/mwinkle/archive/2007/06/07/introducing-the-pageflow-sample.aspx

  • Anonymous
    June 08, 2007
    Page Flow WF sample Jon Flandr's-WCF and WF session at TechEd The Moth--.NET Framework 3.5 Glenn Block

  • Anonymous
    June 08, 2007
    The idea of using Windows Workflow foundation for driving the UI behavior of an application is a very

  • Anonymous
    June 09, 2007
    Matt Winkler gave a session this week at TechEd where he described how to use Windows Workflow Foundation

  • Anonymous
    June 10, 2007
    I've had a couple of ISVs ask me about a Windows Workflow Foundation page flow session that was delivered

  • Anonymous
    June 11, 2007
    Have you seen all the recent chatter on the MSDN Blogs about ASP.NET Page Flow this past week? The Web Client Software Factory has a Page Flow Application Block that does the same thing and is very, very slick. Read more...

  • Anonymous
    June 11, 2007
    NavigatorWorkflow looks like a state machine to me.  Why create a new workflow type?

  • Anonymous
    June 12, 2007
    Most people think of workflows as a tool to represent and automate back-end business processes. Back-end

  • Anonymous
    June 12, 2007
    Matt Winkler posted some very cool stuff regarding using Windows Workflow and ASP.NET on his blog a few

  • Anonymous
    June 12, 2007
    Most people think of workflows as a tool to represent and automate back-end business processes. Back

  • Anonymous
    June 12, 2007
    It's very good idea to do such work! but, how do you block your page flow. i mean, when u finish one step, u mustn't step down to another, u must "unload" the workflow instance. and then another guy logined to finish next step, how can i carry out this, pls?

  • Anonymous
    June 14, 2007
    So, I got a little bit of feedback from my initial post . First, thanks, it's great to see all of the

  • Anonymous
    June 14, 2007
    Here's a comment from my initial post introducing the pageflow sample from wleong: NavigatorWorkflow

  • Anonymous
    June 14, 2007
    Eagerly, we hope to c your following wonderful illustrations about your PageFlow invention. OK?

  • Anonymous
    June 15, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    June 18, 2007
    Is there a way to continue a PageFlow across Sessions?

  • Anonymous
    June 18, 2007
    Several weeks ago, Matthew Winkler posted about a new sample of how to implement Page Navigation using

  • Anonymous
    June 29, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 18, 2007
    Introducing the Pageflow Sample

  • Anonymous
    July 19, 2007
    微軟負責 Workflow Foundation 技術推廣的專家 Matt Winkler，日前在 Matt Winkler&#39;s blog 提供了一套整合 Workflow Foundation

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    Weird title, I know. It will make sense soon... The last week I had a relative simple project that I

  • Anonymous
    September 10, 2007
    I've been having some fun playing around with Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5, and wanted

  • Anonymous
    December 04, 2007
    He Matt, Pageflow is a cool thing to work with. Is there any sight of getting it on Codeplex? BTW I made some changes to the framework which might be useable for other: http://conducido.nl/blog/2007/11/29/directly-access-a-webpage-which-is-part-of-the-pageflow-workflow/ Some other questions are there coming more updates? Further documentation etc etc? Let me know what your plans are with pageflow. Kinds Regards Wouter Crooy

  • Anonymous
    January 05, 2008
    Does anyone know where can I find the sample code?  I just installed the PageFlowSetup.exe ver 1.1.  I can see the new templates fine. Thanks,

  • Anonymous
    January 30, 2008
    Try : [Drive:]Program FilesWindows Workflow Foundation SamplesPageFlowSample Other question, the sample was installed and compiled, but when I'm trying to run, it is giving an error when connecting to the DB. Is any way to disable the connection to the DB?

  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2008
    微軟負責 Workflow Foundation 技術推廣的專家 Matt Winkler，日前在 Matt Winkler's blog 提供了一套整合 Workflow Foundation 與&#160;

  • Anonymous
    February 03, 2008
    微軟負責 Workflow Foundation 技術推廣的專家 Matt Winkler，日前在 Matt Winkler&#39;s blog 提供了一套整合 Workflow Foundation

  • Anonymous
    March 04, 2008
    This sounds like a really cool idea.   It would also be cool if validation rules could be specified for input fields. I am super-excited about this idea, it has great potential.  I say "Go for it!".  Put it on Codeplex!

  • Anonymous
    July 23, 2008
    微軟負責 Workflow Foundation 技術推廣的專家 Matt Winkler，日前在 Matt Winkler&#39;s blog 提供了一套整合 Workflow Foundation

  • Anonymous
    December 10, 2008
    Is there any documentation for the NestedNavigator sample?  I can't get it to run and I'm not sure what it is supposed to do.

  • Anonymous
    February 05, 2009
    Hello, I am getting some error to compile NavigatorWork through .net WorkFlowComplier. One is Error CS1061: 'Sample.NV234v0_2' does not contain a definition for 'InteractionActivity' and no extension method 'InteractionActivity' accepting a first argument of type 'Sample.NV234v0_2' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) When i used transition between two or more InteractionActivity and with out transition its compiled properly. Other is error 348: Compilation failed. Type 'System.Workflow.Activities.SequenceActivity' in Assembly 'System.Workflow.Activities, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' is not marked as serializable when i used transition between any .Net Base Activities. Please help me if any one know this issue. Thanks in Advance.

  • Anonymous
    February 20, 2009
    Design and Implementation Notes The Seam project describes page flow as "complex user interactions." Microsoft's Matt Winkler describes pageflow