Developer Introduction to Workflows for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007

Introduction to Workflows

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services provides a robust, customizable work environment for users to create, collaborate, and store valuable business information. Now, with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, you can attach custom business processes to these documents or list items.

You can represent these custom business processes by using workflows. A workflow is a natural way to organize and run a set of work units, or activities, to form an executable representation of a work process. This process can control almost any aspect of an item in Windows SharePoint Services, including the life cycle of that item. The workflow is flexible enough to model both the system functions and the human actions necessary for the workflow to complete.

You can create workflows that are as simple or complex as your business processes require. You can create workflows that the user initiates, or workflows that Windows SharePoint Services automatically initiates based on some event, such as when an item is created or changed.

Suppose you need to create a simple workflow that routes a document to a series of users for approval or comments. This workflow would include actions that the system needs to perform, as well as provide interfaces for the users to interact with the workflow in prescribed ways. For example, Windows SharePoint Services would send an e-mail message to the selected users when the document was ready for review. Those users would then need to be able to notify Windows SharePoint Services when they had completed their reviews and, optionally, enter any comments. The workflow framework included in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, and extended in SharePoint Server 2007, enables you to model such complex work processes and present them to end users in an easily understood, unobtrusive manner that guides them through each step of the process.

This article provides a high-level overview of workflows as they are implemented in Windows SharePoint Services and extended in SharePoint Server. It includes a discussion of the developer tools available to create workflows in both environments, and the respective capabilities and advantages of those tools.