Creating a Reusable Workflow from SharePoint Designer 2010

SharePoint Designer is available free of charge from Microsoft who wants to encourage power users and developers to customize the SharePoint 2010 environment to meet a wide variety of business needs. The workstation or server needs to have .NET 3.5 installed, and as discussed in the previous section, the web application needs to be configured to allow the use of SharePoint Designer 2010.

SharePoint Designer 2010 is available in both 32- and 64-bit versions, so developers should be sure to download the version that corresponds to their workstation’s operating system version. The main decision point between 32- and 64-bit development machines comes down to the 4GB limit for 32-bit Vista and XP workstations.

To Install SharePoint Designer 2010, follow these steps:

With SharePoint Designer 2010 downloaded and installed, development can begin immediately as long as the user has a minimum of designer-level rights to a SharePoint 2010 site.

Creating a Reusable Workflow from SharePoint Designer 2010

To create a reusable workflow, the site that will house the workflow must be opened from SharePoint Designer 2010, and then the workflow is designed, tested, and published to the site. It can then added to a list or library on that site and is then ready for use. The following example creates a reusable workflow that is triggered whenever the word “rush” is found in the title field of a document. The application in this example is a collaboration site where managers (User1 and User2) need to review and provide feedback on documents in different libraries before they can be released to marketing. Complaints had occurred before when User1 and User2 weren’t responsive enough, so the workflow was created. If a user thinks his or her document deserves “rush” status, he or she simply needs to add that text to the title field, and the workflow will initiate, and User1 will be informed of the task, and once he completes it, User2 will be assigned a task. Auditing information will track the responsiveness of both User1 and User2.

This workflow takes advantage of the Start Feedback Process action in SharePoint Designer 2010, which contains the logic and functionality of the Collect Feedback workflow that is a standard workflow in SharePoint Server 2010. So, this is an example of a workflow within a workflow that enables even relatively novice workflow designers to take advantage of the standard workflows provided out of the box.

Follow these steps to open a SharePoint 2010 site and create this site workflow:

1.	Open SharePoint Designer 2010 by clicking the Start button, click All Programs, SharePoint, and then click Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010.
2.	From the File tab, the Sites node should be open; if it does not open, click Sites. Then click the Open Site icon.
3.	Type the URL of the site (for example, http://abcsp1004/sites/Chapter28) or select the site from the list of available sites if it has been accessed before, as shown in Figure 1. Note: Do not include a page name such as default.aspx or /pages/home.aspx. Figure 1. Opening a site from Designer 2010.
4.	Click Workflows from the Site Objects list in the navigation pane.
5.	Click Reusable Workflow from the Workflows tab, and the Create Reusable Workflow window will open, as shown in Figure 2. Figure 2. Naming the Reusable workflow in Designer 2010.
6.	Provide a title for the workflow, such as Reusable Workflow – Rush in Title, and a description if desired. In this case, the description is entered as follows: This workflow will escalate any item with 'rush' in its title. Leave Content Type set to All, and click OK.
7.	Click the flashing line in the Step 1 box and type if current and press Enter; Designer will determine that you want to enter If current item field equals value. Alternatively, you can click the Condition button and choose If Current Item Field Equals Value.
8.	Click the link labeled Field in the Step 1 box, and select Title from the drop-down menu.
9.	Click the link labeled Equals in the Step 1 box, and select Contains from the drop-down menu.
10.	Click the link labeled value in the Step 1 box, and type rush and press Enter. The results will look like Figure 3. Figure 3. Setting conditions for the workflow in Designer 2010. Note Before making changes to a production system, test your code on a development server or, at a minimum, in a different site collection.
11.	Click the area directly below the line where data was just entered and type Start feedback and press Enter. Designer 2010 will interpret this to mean Start Feedback Process. The results will be the same as Figure 4. This action effectively imbeds a Collect Feedback workflow within this Reusable Workflow, which provides significant functionality within the workflow, as will be demonstrated upon completion of the workflow. Figure 4. Workflow action after adding Start Feedback process in Designer 2010.
12.	Click the These Users link, and the Select Task Participants window will open.
13.	In the Participants field, enter two valid usernames separated by a semicolon (;) (User1;User2 in this example). Leave One at a Time (Serial) selected in the field to the right of Participants.
14.	In the CC field, click the Select Users icon on the right, and click User Who Created Current Item, and then click the Add button. Click OK.
15.	In the Title field, enter the text Rush Item Escalated.
16.	In the Instructions field, enter text describing the activity, such as, This item's title contained the word 'rush' and so has been escalated for review and processing.
17.	In the Duration per Task field, enter 1 and verify that Days is selected to the right. The window should look like Figure 5. Click OK. Figure 5. Defining participants in the Start Feedback Process action in Designer 2010.
18.	Click the Check for Errors button on the Ribbon and the message “The workflow contains no errors” should display.
19.	Click the Publish button on the Ribbon, and the workflow will publish to the site.

In this next section, the workflow will be initiated, and started, to display the functionality without completing the entire workflow. To test the workflow, follow these steps:

1.	Log in to the site as an account with owner-level privileges (http://abcsp1004/sites/Chapter28/documents in this example).
2.	Add the Reusable workflow to the library by accessing Library Settings and clicking the Workflow Settings link in the Permissions and Management section.
3.	The Reusable workflow should appear in the Select a Workflow Template list, as shown in Figure 6. Click the workflow. Figure 6. Choosing and configuring the workflow from Library Settings.
4.	Enter a name for the workflow in the Name section (for example, Rush in Title Workflow Automatic).
5.	Leave the Task list and History list settings at their defaults.
6.	Under Start Options, verify that the Allow This Workflow to Be Manually Started by an Authenticated User with Edit Item Permissions is checked, and check the Start This Workflow When a New Item Is Created and Start This Workflow When an Item Is Changed boxes. Click OK.
7.	Now, log in as a user who is not involved in the feedback process but has contributor-level privileges in the library (for example, User3).
8.	Access the document library on the site and upload a sample document. For this example, the document title is “User3’s super-important document.docx.”
9.	Next, edit the properties of the document and add the term rush to the Title field, and save.
10.	The column titled Rush in Title Workflow will appear in the library and the document should be set to a status of In Progress in that column.
11.	Open Outlook for this user (User3) and an email will be there, announcing the start of the Feedback workflow, as shown in Figure 7. Figure 7. Email informing document owner of workflow start.
12.	Log out, and then log back in as the first approver (User1 in this example). Open Outlook and note that an email has been received, as shown in Figure 8. Figure 8. Email informing workflow participant of workflow

The rest of the workflow won’t be covered here, but it gives User1 a change to provide feedback on the document and then once approved, a task will be created for User2 and that user will be given a chance to provide feedback.