SharePoint Workflow Authoring in Visio Premium 2010

Visio has long been the tool of choice for documenting processes. Ever since the introduction of workflow support in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, we have been hearing from customers, “wouldn’t it be great to visualize SharePoint workflows in Visio like flowcharts? Wouldn’t it also be great to go from Visio business process diagrams to executable workflows on SharePoint?”

In Visio Premium 2010, we have partnered with the SharePoint Designer team to bring you that functionality to life. In this blog post and the next, we will introduce to you how you can author SharePoint workflows just like any flowcharts in Visio, and how such workflows can then be imported into SharePoint Designer 2010 for further editing before it can be executed in SharePoint.

What are SharePoint Workflows?

First of all, what are SharePoint Workflows? Workflow is just another way of saying process flow, something most Visio users are already familiar with. In SharePoint, there are pre-defined common activities (e.g. Send email) that can be executed together with others, and together this forms a “workflow”. Some SharePoint workflow examples include: document approval workflow, expense approval workflow, and document review feedback workflow. A user may originally create the business workflow in Visio, as shown below:



That same workflow, implemented as a SharePoint Workflow, can look like the following in SharePoint Designer 2010:


So how can you go from a business flowchart in Visio to a workflow published to SharePoint?

Starting from Visio: New SharePoint Workflow Template

In Visio Premium 2010, we are introducing a brand new drawing template just for SharePoint Workflow. When you start up Visio, you can go to New->Flowchart->Microsoft SharePoint Workflow in order to start authoring a Visio SharePoint Workflow from scratch.

This is especially handy for Business Analysts or

Process Analysts who are already familiar with flowcharting in Visio, but would like to automate the workflow to be executed in SharePoint.

Upon opening the drawing, you will notice that key SharePoint activities are available in three separate stencils: SharePoint Workflow Actions, SharePoint Workflow Conditions, and SharePoint Workflow Terminators. Every SharePoint activity directly maps to those available in SharePoint Designer 2010.

To start authoring a SharePoint workflow, simply drop shapes to the drawing canvas, just like creating any basic flowchart in Visio. Note you can modify the original shape text and replace it with text more relevant to your business process:



Exporting Workflow to SharePoint Designer 2010

When you are done with authoring your workflow, you can export it in a file that can be imported by SharePoint Designer 2010. By exporting the workflow to SharePoint Designer 2010, SharePoint specialists or IT professionals alike can further parameterize the workflows by binding workflow activity fields with SharePoint lookups and then publish as executable workflows.

To export, simply go to the Process tab, and click Export:

Visio will automatically validate the workflow first to make sure the workflow is valid (for more information about our validation feature, see this earlier blog post). In the event that your workflow has issues, an Issues window will pop up, and the shape with the issue will be highlighted.

After you fix all issues, the workflow will be exported as a Visio Workflow Interchange (*.vwi) file, which can be imported into SharePoint Designer 2010.

Upcoming Post: Part 2 of SharePoint Workflow Authoring in Visio Premium 2010

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.