Authoring workflows in WSS v3 - to use SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio, that is the the question!

Last night at the monthly JAXDUG meeting, David McNamee came to talk about MOSS and the goals of this next release of Office System (clients & server SKUs). Previously the group hadn't been terribly hip to WSS, but from what they saw last night, there was definitely some interest!

One of the things that really caught everyone's eye was the fact you can author workflows straight from SharePoint Designer! As a followup to our discussion, I wanted to compare/contrast when you'd use SharePoint Designer to author workflows in SharePoint to when you'd rather use Visual Studio. This information is paraphrased from the WSS v3 SDK Beta 2 refresh, which has a lot more info about workflows in SharePoint under:
General Reference\Workflows in WSS\WorkFlow Development for WSS\Workflow Development Tools Comparison

Both products can do the following:

Author workflows for use in WSS v3.
Generates a workflow markup file that's stored in the database.

So where do the two products diverge?

Visual Studio 2005 (w/ the WF Designer)	SharePoint Designer 2007
Can create code-behind file(s) that allow you to add any custom code (C#/VB.NET) to your workflow.	No code-behind support.
Can design workflows as a template to be associated with various lists and sites.	When authoring a workflow, it's bound to specific lists/sites at design time.
Compiles the workflow compiled into an assembly and deployed to the server.	Everything is persisted in markup and stored in a document library in the target site.
Use the browser UI to associate a workflow with a list to make it available to that list.	Association occurs at design time.
Can associate workflows with content types.	Not possible in SPD.
Can include InfoPath web enabled forms as a data collection vehicle via Forms Server.	ASP.NET 2.0 ASPX pages are built automatically at design time, but you can customize them after they've been generated.
Can modify workflows and create custom activities.	~~Can't modify workflows and you're limited to the activities that come~~ ~~OOTB~~. See update at the end of this post.
Manual deployment (via a SharePoint Feature).	Automatically deployed at design time.
Rich debugging support.	No debugging support.
Supports building sequential and state machine workflows.	Can only build sequential workflows.

» WSS v3 SDK Beta 2 refresh

Technorati : sharepointdesigner, workflow, wss

[Update 8/4/2006] Adam (via the comments in this entry) points out that you *can* add custom activities and conditions to SharePoint Designer's workflow builder... I wasn't aware of that! Check out the documentation here [http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms454098.aspx] for more info (look for the heading Adding Custom Activities and Conditions.

posted on Thursday, August 03, 2006 2:48 PM

Feedback

# re: Authoring workflows in WSS v3 - to use SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio, that is the the question! 8/3/2006 2:18 PM John F. Holliday

Just wanted to add a comment about a recent experience I had with SPD - basically, it saved my butt! I was up against a tight deadline and needed a quick workflow demo and SPD provided a quick and easy way to sketch the solution in "broad strokes".

On the downside, you really have to start over from scratch if you want to leverage the effort into something more formal. For example, I thought I might be able to just open the XML file in Visual Studio and continue developing the workflow in the designer. Unfortunately, the generated XML representation of SPD workflows is definitely not intended for human consumption. I could barely follow the logic. So it really was a "one off" type of solution.

# re: Authoring workflows in WSS v3 - to use SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio, that is the the question! 8/3/2006 4:51 PM AC [MVP MCMS]

John - Good follow up! For anyone else, here's what he was talking about: http://www.johnholliday.net/archive/2006/07/09/3.aspx

re: Authoring workflows in WSS v3 - to use SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio, that is the the question! 8/4/2006 3:39 AM Adam Pawsey

Just a small correction... You aren't limited to the activites that come out of the box with SPD. You can build custom activites and install them into the available list with a tiny bit of extra work (mark them as safe, give them a sentence structure to fit with the SPD method of listing actions in words... eg: Send an email to [variable]). This is however an Administrative action and can't be done by the SPD user on the fly.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms454098.aspx

# re: Authoring workflows in WSS v3 - to use SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio, that is the the question! 8/4/2006 8:16 AM AC [MVP MCMS]

Adam - I wasn't aware of that... thanks for pointing it out! I'll update the post now with this extra info!

# 2007 MOSS Resource Links (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server) 8/4/2006 9:48 AM The Boiler Room - Mark Kruger, S

Here is an assortment of various 2007 Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Documentation / Reference Materials...

re: Authoring workflows in WSS v3 - to use SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio, that is the the question! 8/30/2007 5:35 AM RameshSubburaj

Hi, is it possible to save a site as template, which has got a document library and a sharepoint designer workflow assocaited to it. so that i can reuse the template to create a new site so that the worflow also comes along with it?

# re: Authoring workflows in WSS v3 - to use SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio, that is the the question! 8/30/2007 10:48 AM AC [MVP MOSS]

RameshSubburaj-
I think that will work, but you'd need to test it. You may have to save the data with the site to get the workflow to go along with the template... not sure.

re: Authoring workflows in WSS v3 - to use SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio, that is the the question! 10/3/2007 3:56 AM kunz

Why doesn't the workflow created in SPD use the manually changed tasklistid (attribute value in the wfconfig.xml in the association element)? I simply want so associate a custom takslist to my workflow.

# re: Authoring workflows in WSS v3 - to use SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio, that is the the question! 10/3/2007 7:27 AM AC [MVP MOSS]

Kunz-
They why doesn't really matter... that's just one of the limitations of building workflows with SPD.

re: Authoring workflows in WSS v3 - to use SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio, that is the the question! 11/19/2007 12:49 AM Satish

Hi friends,
I dont think the workflow gets associated with the sharepoint list template. I have tried it. But if there is any other way through out of box please share it.
Cheers

# re: Authoring workflows in WSS v3 - to use SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio, that is the the question! 11/20/2007 9:55 AM AC [MVP MOSS]

Satish-
Correct... workflows created with SPD do NOT attach to the list template, rather they only attach to the list INSTANCE. This is why workflows are not portable between lists because they are attached at design time.

re: Authoring workflows in WSS v3 - to use SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio, that is the the question! 5/1/2008 6:11 AM Narendra

and is the same case with workflows created in VS

# re: Authoring workflows in WSS v3 - to use SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio, that is the the question! 5/1/2008 7:21 AM AC [MVP MOSS]

Narendra-
Hard to know what you are referring to, but if it was my last comment, that's not true. Workflows built with VS are certainly portable.

re: Authoring workflows in WSS v3 - to use SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio, that is the the question! 11/8/2008 9:40 AM ashish

I have created customized workflow using visual studio and have attached it to the SharePoint list. The problem I am getting is when I modify my workflow code and reinstall/reattach it to the list; the workflow items which were already in progress stops progressing further, so each time when I modify workflow I remove the old workflow attach the new one and had to delete the entire old workflow items.
So, is there a way to retain the workflow item in progress (until they complete) when we reinstall the workflow in between. Please advice.

# re: Authoring workflows in WSS v3 - to use SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio, that is the the question! 11/9/2008 12:35 PM AC [MVP MOSS]

Ashish-
Generally you don't want to update running workflows, rather you should be setting the old one to "no new instances" and the adding the new one to the list / content type. This is just generally a good practice.

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