Complex SharePoint Workflows and Forms Made Easy

One SharePoint feature that many companies wish to take advantage of is process control by means of electronic workflows. SharePoint has always had a workflow component and ships with a few rudimentary workflows. Even with the enhancements to the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and the underlying .NET 3.0 Framework, it can still be somewhat cumbersome to create complex workflows. Often, the services of a .NET developer are required to create the desired workflow.

While the workflow engine has improved, you can still only create relatively simple workflows using SharePoint Designer (SPD). To create complex workflows you need to do programming using Visual Studio.NET. This leaves most of our clients between a rock and a hard place; you either don’t create complex workflows resulting in your SharePoint workflows not really replicating you business processes, or you find/hire programming resources to develop workflows for you.

Razorleaf knows that in order for our clients to improve their business processes by leveraging SharePoint, they need the ability to, without programming, create complex workflows. To this end we would like to introduce you to a product called ShareVis. ShareVis is a workflow and complex forms design tool – a Visio-like flowchart editor that, in the background, is doing all of the coding for you.

With ShareVis, any authorized user who wants to create a workflow only needs to know how to create a flowchart via drag-and-drop. ShareVis workflows allow for complex workflow functionality like parallel paths, delegation, conditional paths, approval/rejection decisions and integration with Web services for connection to other business systems. All workflow processing is done via the Web server so there is no need for client-side software to be installed. ShareVis is licensed on a per-server basis.

In addition to workflows for document approval, task assignment, task management and meeting requests, ShareVis has a forms engine that allows you to create very complex workflow-enabled forms. These forms can be used to collect data about the process. The collected data can then be used to dynamically route the workflow.

For example, you could have a time-off request workflow that is initiated by an associate in your company. The workflow would flow to all those in the company responsible for approving the vacation request. If the requested number of days is greater than ten, ShareVis could route the workflow to the department manager while requests of ten days or fewer simply go to the department supervisor. Once the request is approved, by means of an out-of-the-box plug in, your HR database could be updated to reflect the reduction in available vacation days. Along the way, everyone in the process would be notified of the current status via email.

Tags: .NET 3.0, collaboration, electronic workflows, HR, PDM, SharePoint, SharePoint Designer, ShareVis, SPD, WF, Windows Workflow Foundation