Working Through Workflows

Before you start working with workflows, you really need to understand what you want your workflow to do. One of the sayings that I've picked up from a friend of mine is "That's possible, but not the best way." Most people generally think of SharePoint when they start using it as a tool that should be designed with all of the bells and whistles of other products that they've already used. What I've found is that those bells and whistles may not exist exclusively, but they are there if you know what where to look.

One of the important things to realize is that you need to have workflows operating in the farm level. If you find that your workflows aren't working, a quick fix could be to contact your SharePoint Administrator and ask them whether or not the workflow server is connected to the farm.

When you start building your workflow, the first thing that comes to mind is how easy it is to say out-loud what you want to do. I would recommend writing this down and working through your words. What are you assuming is common sense? The reason I say this is that what may be common sense to you doesn't make any difference for a computer. Any programmer should already know this, but it's worth reiterating.

There are some differences between workflows in SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013. Therefore, if you're used to working with SharePoint 2010, you might need to make some notes when transitioning to SharePoint 2013; however, the option to create SharePoint 2010 workflows is still available in SharePoint 2013. For instance, one of the features that is not available in the SharePoint 2013 workflow is the option to authenticate as a specific user or to grant certain permissions. This is one of the features that was previously available and if your workflow requires this functionality, you will need to make a SharePoint 2010 workflow.

If you are working in SharePoint designer and you are having issues where your workflow doesn't start automatically where you added the workflow to a list and in the workflow settings checked the boxes for starting the workflow automatically, check the options in the workflow itself. One of the issues that I've found that typically occur is that the workflow settings in SharePoint designer under "Start Options" for the workflow are not checked. If these options are not checked, each time the workflow is published or appended to a list or library, these options override the changes you made in SharePoint. Make sure you have these options checked in SharePoint designer.

The basics of each workflow is that there are different stages and follows a pretty logical order. Each stage can transition to other stages that the programmer desires, or follow conditions on where to transition. These options are accessed by clicking in the transition area and typing "Go to" as the action. If you would like to add conditions, simply type "If" and the options will appear as expected. The stage list is composed of stages that you've already created including "End of Workflow". "End of Workflow" tells SharePoint to stop the workflow.

The rest of the workflow should follow the logic that you've written down. It might take some getting used to, but a little experimentation in the beginning can be useful for seeing how SharePoint workflows operate. For more information on conditions see my post here.