I am often asked by enterprise IT leaders on approaches for building workflows including third party BPM platforms for SharePoint. I have written this blog to describe the ways.
Here are four ways to build SharePoint workflows:
- Out of Box Workflows – These are used for small applications to automate many tasks. Such tasks would include:
- Approvals
- Collecting feedback
- Collecting signatures
- Disposition workflows
- Three state workflows
Organizations can use out of box workflows to automate all simple tasks.
- SharePoint Designer – You can use SharePoint Designer workflows when you need to use some workflow logic. You do not need to write any code in this workflow. However, these are sequential workflows and the user must have some familiarity with the tool.
- Visual Studio-based development – You can use Visual Studio to build workflows. This is as good as building a custom application. Developers can use SharePoint and .NET capabilities to build workflow applications. This is the most popular method to build applications and workflows especially when one must integrate with back end systems. With this workflow, you get tremendous flexibility. With Visual Studio, one can build sequential as well as state machine workflows. However, this is a coding intensive approach. The processes can only be built by a development team and has higher learning & maintenance costs.
- Use of BPM tool – Tools like Nintex offer multiple workflow capabilities on the SharePoint platform. These tools can be used when:
- Many workflows are to be automated across organizations
- Power users are available or can be trained to build workflows fast (no coding in most cases)
- Support availability from vendor
Want to know more. Drop me a comment below or connect with me at @ezest or @girishprotean.
