Understanding Sharepoint 2013 workflow

Workflows are used for designing business processes, you design workflow based on document -means document centric  or sometimes complex human approval workflow using SharePoint, how people has been using workflows in SharePoint 2010 basically there is a old school of thought exist which is workflow engine starts automatically once you install SharePoint 2010, nothing special you need to do, and SharePoint stores all data in sql server related to workflow as a rule of thumb.

SharePoint 2013 has support of previous workflow -that model exist so using SharePoint 2010 platform you can start your work and that mechanism is available in SharePoint 2013, additionally you can design workflow based on new model this mechanism has a new concept called workflow manager - you need to install it separately this mechanism is not available when you install SharePoint 2013.

So basically there are two different procedure to design workflow, one- you can design workflow based on your previous mechanism as you have been designing using SharePoint 2010 we call it old procedure.

Understanding Workflow Manager:
 And second mechanism is new service you need to install it and you will see option showing you a platform to choose when you create a new workflow in SharePoint 2013 either based on SharePoint 2010 or newly introduced mechanism SharePoint 2013.
Windows workflow manager is new mechanism of authoring and hosting workflow in SharePoint 2013 newly introduced component you need to install it separately.

• You can manage your activities using this mew concept.
• You can do tracking and monitoring for workflow
•  You can do workflow instance management and much more.

Workflow Development environment for SharePoint 2013:
Workflow development using the following for SharePoint 2013 are below:

• Visual Studio 2012
• SharePoint designer 2013
• Infopath 2013
• Visio 2013

You also can use Visual Studio 2012 to design workflow based on SharePoint 2013, as you can define here custom actions for workflows ,  another option you have vision 2013 to design workflow and then import them using SPD 2013 and start designing UI.
Infopath 2013 is another option for you people to design UI and then design workflow.

You can use SharePoint designer 2013 to deign end-end workflow you can give it a try after downloading and installing it then create SharePoint site using designer and start working with workflow.
Actions are object placeholder to represent activities and display them using SharePoint designer 2013, please review a  partial list of new actions available in SharePoint designer 2013 Workflow:

• Assign a Task
• Start a Task Process
• Go to This Stage
• Call HTTP Web Service
• Start a List Workflow
• Start a Site Workflow
• Build DynamicValue

Above are example of available action for your workflow to start  with and design your workflow and use them in it.

Sharepoint 2010 Features

This is all about Sharepoint 2010 Features-Microsoft has provided a lot of new sharepoint 2010 features including the rich ribbon Interface- and much more functionality bundled with it.

We will try to cover many sharepoint 2010 features please stay connected to read more if you do not find your desired topic.

Sharepoint 2010 cross the boundaries of browser and reach at mobile desktop – so you can enhance the employee productivity while they are away from office.

With the enhanced mobile access with sharepoint 2010 employees can access information from different location share and edit the presentation or docs and comments on all instances to make them run faster including word docs and power point presentation etc more than the previous version –sharepoint 2007 that focused on infopath forms on mobile only.

You will be going through with the sharepoint 2010 features and its comparison with sharepoint 2007

 There is a drastic change in user interface of sharepoint 2010 that is- many options are available on ribbon style interface, so user does not spend much time to go further to do single task, it can be related to view web application properties or make any changes on web application level or if user is working on document workspace then the commands are available on Ribbon- make changes on the fly and get going or any task you do using ribbon in sharepoint2010 is fast than sharepoint 2007.

You do not need to create a webaprt zone to add a webpart for your site in sharepoint 2010, in earlier version people needs to add a webpart zone to add a webpart in your site, so finally editing content and adding functionality been more easy in SharePoint 2010.

 
Inline editing :

another new feature, you can edit list item on the fly like list item can edited instantly. So user does not need to navigate back and fourth to edit item just single click using AJAX Dialog things are done. 

Quick Upload: 

this is another improved feature in sharepoint 2010, if you want to upload content in document library so content upload functionality become too fast - only dialog box is changed and speed of upload is increased and the rest of functionality is same as it was in sharepoint 2007.

Different theme for branding:

 in sharepoint 2010 has been provided and functionality is  improved and made more easy like you need to do a lot of work if you just want to change header color of sharepoint 2007, but in sharepoint 2010 you just tweak with the theme option and you will see the same color and change it from theme setting.

Create new List option:

from all content type will display the screen which is more handy and more rich interface . Where you can create new list, custom list, external list etc.

BCS: Business Connectivity Service(Sharepoint 2010)-:

old BDC Sharepoint2007

You can access data from LoB application and manipulate it using sharepoint 2010, In sharepoint 2007 BDC had some different tendency to work with -where you need to write code a lot to add new item into your LoB application, but with SP2010 you can manipulate data without any difficulty and item can be manipulated using BCS Service- now Microsoft has released it as a service. And you can host this service on different server to make your application much faster.

Document Set:

Another sharepoint improvement is Document Set feature that allows you to manage docs as a set. Documents set versions as a whole and downloaded as zip file and they share same meta data. In sharepoint 2007 it was a major issue you can not have multiple docs attached with a single doc(by design you can only attaché docs as a  links)- Now using Document Set feature you approve single document set where you have stored 5 more related documents. Major difference in Doc Workspace and Document set is that it shares same metadata.

Visio Process Repository:

Microsoft has introduced few new template based on different functionality and that is called Visio process repository template in collaboration section, 

Using this template you can track your visio diagram and find out how many guys had made changes in which versions etc. And all the processes designed in Visio can be stored in process diagram document library in SharePoint 2010.

We have not covered all Sharepoint 2010 Features in this article, stay connected to read more.

If you want to read more on Sharepoint 2007 please visit: Sharepoint Certification the most famous article on this site.

MS Sql Server Management Studio

We have not covered all new features in this article, stay connected to read more.

If you want to read more on Sharepoint 2007 please visit: Sharepoint Certification the most famous article on this site.