It is strange how many developers wince when they face SharePoint and become melancholy when talking about workflows. Workflows are not just like programming, or something very special or something very complicated or something very limited or something for documents. Some people tried to solve simple tasks with SharePoint workflows, but failed somewhere when it became clear that they cannot read the manual from the middle and they have no time to read it from the very beginning.

Without laying claim to the laurels of an investigator of myths about SharePoint, I will state my hypothesis about their origin exclusively. Microsoft created very powerful mechanism which makes it possible to automate business processes, document flow and even to define the logic of web-site without programming. It is wonderful.  Everyone has been dreaming of such a mechanism for a long time. People want to do something without a debugger in the 21^st century.

And take a look around. Everything is present: Word Services, Excel Services. For example, after completing this row in a list I want an invoice to be generated by template and I want it to be sent in PDF format to the client by e-mail. And I do not want to program this. Or I want pictures to be resized at least up to 1024x768 when the user uploads his huge photos made by his big single lens reflex camera to SharePoint. And if possible - to compress the pictures down to 800x600. And in the 21^st century people do not want to program this at all.

Stop - you will say - how is this connected with workflows? Workflows here could be helpful for us: we open SharePoint Designer, go to Workflows, create a List Workflow for the selected list or document library, mark that it will run automatically when adding a new element and… face a crushing defeat!

Unfortunately a powerful mechanism has a very primitive realization. Microsoft provided us with a little bit more that 30 building bricks (referred to as workflow actions) from which we are able to build workflows. And there is even a brick sending e-mail. But the problem is that it is impossible to attach either a file or a document from the document library to this letter. There is no brick for work with Word and Excel Services, there is no brick for work with images.

Usually, after studying the list of these bricks, developers give a disappointed sigh and run Visual Studio. It becomes clear to them that it is impossible to solve their task with the help of these bricks and it is simpler to write everything from the beginning to the end by themselves. Thus, one more custom web part appears on a corporate site. I suspect that sometimes managers of IT Departments pray for programmers, since programmers have already written a hundred web-parts and no one will be able to understand these web-parts except for themselves.

In general, in spite of the declared freedom from programming, no freedom was reached. What a 21^st century this is!

We can also talk about SharePoint Designer and Microsoft Visio and workflows programming in Visual Studio. Here is a workflow in Microsoft Visio:

<ATTACHED: 1-conversion-workflow-authoring-in-visio-2010.png>

If you know what every block does, it is rather easy to understand an algorithm of work process operation. Everything is seen clearly! But you are not able to set workflow parameters or to change them in Visio. For example, there is a brick for sending an e-mail, but to know who will be the recipient of the e-mail - welcome to SharePoint Designer

<ATTACHED: 2-conversion-workflow-authoring-in-SPD-2010>

Everything is not very clear in SharePoint Designer as well, but the whole work process is set out here exactly, including setting e-mail addresses for the "Send e-mail" brick. Just imagine if a work process would be a little bit more complicated. How long it would take you to understand its nature?

However, to be true, it is possible to get used to SharePoint Designer and it manages its work on workflows creation. Even with good marks. But the question of the 21^st century is: why is there still no online tool on Silverlight for workflows management and creation which could, without limitation, show it in the form of a flowchart? Is it possible that if you face difficulties in understanding an algorithm in SharePoint Designer you have to pay $1000 for Microsoft Visio Premium?

So, a set of bricks and tools is surprising. More surprising is the fact that nothing changed generally, with a huge fundamental mechanism of SharePoint 2007 in SharePoint 2010. And many surprised and disappointed developers without understanding things to the end but having understood exactly that nothing would be reached without Visual Studio, have created the well-known myth that workflows are not a finished technology and cannot be applied to practical tasks. But since everywhere at presentations people say the opposite and their presentations are very beautiful and persuading, this myth is told by developers in a whisper only and to trustees only. It is interesting to note: does the king know that he is naked?

Of course, I would not disgrace myself before the whole world and write these awful things about this excellent technology of a famous company in which, by the way, many friends of mine work, if I didn't want to sell you something. My opinion would remain unchanged anyway, but I would not write about it for sure.

SharePoint has been used in our company with an increasing intensity starting with the 2003 version, and all these seven-eight years we have been slowly moving from creation of simple sites for internal use up to creation of serial commercial products. Maybe the above lines include those multiple offences when we took a new beautiful and sparkling technology and hoped to complete everything by the evening and understood in two weeks later that we would not succeed.

And to discredit a myth, I want to state the two main ideas of this article:

1. Work processes are really a powerful mechanism. Any IT specialist can create workflows and not only manage document flow but also determine the logic of web-site. Without programming! And the main thing - these work processes are easy and not expensive for administration, modifying and support.  You have only to provide a developer with more bricks having wide functionality.

2. The creation of work processes in Visual Studio is an evil. A workflows created in Visual Studio is very expensive for administration and support since for this purpose you need Visual Studio and a programmer, indeed a very qualified programmer. If possible, avoid creation of work processes in Visual Studio. If there is no way to avoid custom code, you have two alternative ways: creation of custom workflow action or use of third party workflow action allowing you to execute the code on VB.NET or C#, compiled at the time of execution. It will make your working processes much easier to manage.

So the only question is: "where to take additional bricks with wide functionality?" One of the answers is - from us. We have created the HarePoint Workflow Extensions product, which includes over 160 finished and well-documented bricks. With their help you can:

• Convert documents to different formats including PDF.
• Read and write Word and Excel documents, thereby allowing you to generate invoices, payment orders etc. easily from work process.
• Send files and documents by e-mail, FTP, save them on disk or to network share.
• Work with SQL databases and XML, make requests to web-services.
• Execute just-in-time compiled C# and VB.NET code from workflows.
• Convert and process images, change their size.
• Work with Active Directory, work with HTTP, SMTP, POP3, FTP, RSS, XMPP and Twitter network protocols.
• And many, many other things (it is almost true about coffee and beer in the headline).

Another answer - ask Google, and you will find similar products.

The main question when using such products is the following: what risks exist at portal automation with a solutions provided by third parties? In general, the risk is minimal. You get a set of well-documented workflow actions, each of which solves one small task. For example, it converts images from one format to another. In case of any problem either with developers company or with workflow action, you can always replace this component in workflow with a similar component from another company or even with a component developed by yourself. It is important that when using such products you do not switch to another platform, but simply expand a standard set of available thirty components with a hundred or several hundreds components provided by a third party developer.

The second question is less important, but you hear it often as well: why do I need 160 components more if I need only three and we have our own programmers? Those people who understand the "Dao" of workflows start to solve a wide range of tasks with their help. And even those tasks which seem not to have direct connection to workflows. In addition, before you start writing your own library of workflow actions, it is reasonable to be based on a finished, considered framework. It will be much cheaper than an in-house product: the bright and colorful world of SharePoint programming has its dark side as well, but I will not tell this secret to anyone. Only under confidentiality.

HarePoint Workflow Extensions has 30-day free trial version, it can be download from the product home page: www.harepoint.com

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HarePoint is developer and publisher of software solutions for Microsoft SharePoint.

The company offers 2 leading products: MAPILab Statistics for SharePoint (web-analytics and reporting solution for SharePoint-based portals and sites), HarePoint Workflow Extensions (a pack of activities for workflow authoring) and some web-parts and features for SharePoint 2007/2010. The Director of Strategic Development is Alexandr Gorlach. HarePoint (as a subdivision of MAPILab Ltd.) exists since 2009 and has Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status.

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