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Five Workflow Project Mistakes and Five Ways to Avoid Them
Mike FitzmauriceVP – Workflow Technology, [email protected]@mikefitz
Introduction
There are more than five
These are extra top-of-mind
Based on real-world projects
Advice applies to any workflow product
Warning: no demos
Good Uses of SharePoint Workflow
Managing how people work
Document approval & feedback
Collaborative reviews & discussions
Gathering signatures
Good Uses of SharePoint Workflow
Automating some of SharePoint’s behavior
Approve site creation requests
Parse incoming email in a list and act on it
Publishing items to target
Moving project proposals through lifecycles
Possible Uses of SharePoint Workflow
Manipulating other applications, data sources
Employee onboarding
Resource scheduling
SharePoint lists become work queues
Bad Uses of SharePoint Workflow
Transaction-oriented processes
Blocking or modifying activity
Aggressive data transformations
Calculation-intensive processes
Consensus Probably Doesn’t Exist
Get 3 employees and 1 manager together
Talk about a process
Little agreement
Documentation disagreement, too
Initial Failure as a Winning Strategy
Create an initial workflow just to show how awful (or incomplete) a process is.
Only then can you change it.
Everyday Processes
Have few stakeholders (even if many participants)
Are easier to automate
Free up time to focus
Teach users how to think
You may think it looks like this…
Start
Publisher
deploys to
public web
site
End
End End
Manage
r
approve
s
Yes
No
Lawyer
Approv
es
Yes
No
Or perhaps this…
Start
Publisher
deploys to
public web
site
End
End
Author
Revis
es
Yes
No
Manage
r
Approv
es
Yes
No
Lawyer
Approv
es
Yes
No
How About This Instead?
(re)Submit?
Author
End Manager
OK?
Manager
Author Legal
Choice
Legal
Author ManagerPublish
Publisher
Manager
Publisher
Who Understands All of This?
Start
Publisher
deploys to
public web
site
End
End
Author
Revis
es
Yes
No
Manage
r
Approv
es
Yes
No
Lawyer
Approv
es
Yes
No
Easy User Participation
Any user understands his/her part
Few people understand everything
Process = sum of stages
How About This?
(re)Submit?
Author
End Editor
OK?
Manager
Author Legal
Choice
Legal
Author PublisherManager
Publisher
End
Publisher(re)Submit?
Editor
Author Manager
Without stages…
A lot of If-Then-Else conditions
A lot of looping
Very confusing diagrams
“GoTo” statements
If (x and y) thendo thisdo that
End if
If (user is Bob) thendo this and that and the other thingundo that
End if
If (x and y) thendo thisdo that
End if
If (x and y) thendo thisdo that
End if
If (user is Bob) thendo this and that and the other thingundo that
End if
If (x and y) thendo thisdo that
End if
If (x and y) thendo thisdo that
End if
If (user is Bob) thendo this and that and the other thingundo that
End if
If (x and y) thendo thisdo that
End if
If (x and y) thendo thisdo that
End if
If (user is Bob) thendo this and that and the other thingundo that
End if
If (x and y) thendo thisdo that
End if
If (x and y) thendo thisdo that
End if
If (user is Bob) thendo this and that and the other thingundo that
End if
If (x and y) thendo thisdo that
End if
If (x and y) thendo thisdo that
End if
If (user is Bob) thendo this and that and the other thingundo that
End if
If (x and y) thendo thisdo that
End if
If (x and y) thendo thisdo that
End if
If (user is Bob) thendo this and that and the other thingundo that
End if
If (x and y) thendo thisdo that
End if
If (x and y) thendo thisdo that
End if
If (user is Bob) thendo this and that and the other thingundo that
End if
If (x and y) thendo thisdo that
End if
Problems That Remain
Form rules still needed
Form & workflow must be kept in sync
Workflow has many extra steps
One Form Per Step
Content Submit (list item or form library)
Workflow Start (manually-executed workflows only)
Workflow Task
Why this is good
Forms stay simple
Forms are specific to tasks
Workflow is simpler
Data can live anywhere
Easier to secure
It doesn’t fight the platform
Summary
Use SharePoint Workflow when it fits the use case
Fail quickly and fix it
Focus on everyday processes
Embrace stages
Use forms and workflow together