Wednesday, May 19, 2004 9:28 PM Jan Tielens

Another SharePoint Workflow Engine + Workflow Lite Update

Yesterday Kaneboy created a GotDotNet Workspace for his SharePoint Workflow Engine. It's a pitty that all his documentation and installation guidelines are in Chinese. Although I do not speak Chinese, I've checked out this project and it resembles my Workflow Lite For SharePoint project a lot (bases on the screen shots). The only difference is that Kaneboy's approach is to create actions in code (C#) rather than having a set of predefined actions. Anyway I have to practise my Chinese a little bit more to keep an eye on this project! :-)

Now that we're talking workflow, a small update on my Workflow Lite For SharePoint: I've put quite some work in it the past days and I'm feeling comfortable to release a V1 in the next few days, so stay tuned. There are some changes compared to the first version, the most cool one is (in my opinion) the Send Email action. So you can have the workflow process sending emails either to a specific person, or to a group of SharePoint users (defined on the SharePoint site). I'm really happy with that solution because it integrates well with permission settings, which in many scenarios is also based on groups. Ofcourse the content of the emails is fully customizable, it even can contain values of specific fields of the SharePoint document library item! More on this, really soon...

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Comments

# re: Another SharePoint Workflow Engine + Workflow Lite Update

Wednesday, May 19, 2004 9:47 PM by kaneboy

Hi, Jan:
Yes, my implement of SharePoint Workflow Engine got many ideas from your Workflow Lite, and in a previous article in my blog, I introduced your works :). (http://blog.joycode.com/kaneboy/posts/21549.aspx#21565)
Thanks you for your perfect ideas and implement.
And sorry for my poor English. :)

# re: Another SharePoint Workflow Engine + Workflow Lite Update

Thursday, May 20, 2004 4:34 AM by Jan

No problem!

# re: Another SharePoint Workflow Engine + Workflow Lite Update

Thursday, May 20, 2004 10:25 AM by Maxim V. Karpov

Jan and Kaneboy,
Both of your engines are very good simple implementations and people can start using it. Kaneboy code is using reflection. Do you get a performace hit?

Maxim

[www.ipattern.com do you?]

# re: Another SharePoint Workflow Engine + Workflow Lite Update

Sunday, May 23, 2004 1:04 PM by Serge van den Oever

Maxim, I think that the performance hit of replection with respect to the performance hit of adding or modifying a document to a document library is minimal! Event handlers are asynchronious in SPS2003/WSS (you had synchronious events in SPS2001) so I would't bother.

# re: Another SharePoint Workflow Engine + Workflow Lite Update

Monday, May 24, 2004 5:59 AM by John

We're doing a migration (for a client) from SPS 2001 to 2003. The lack of workflow in standard SPS 2003 is a real issue for us.

Do you plan to release the source code to Workflow Lite? (Otherwise, it might be a hard sell).

John

# re: Another SharePoint Workflow Engine + Workflow Lite Update

Monday, May 24, 2004 6:09 AM by Jan

Yes, as soon as I release V1 I'll admit members to the GotDotNet workspace, so they can contribute.

# re: Another SharePoint Workflow Engine + Workflow Lite Update

Friday, July 02, 2004 2:55 PM by Tasia Miles

I was wondering if Workflow Lite works with other Office versions (2000, xp) because from what I see in the demo it only works with 2003, is that correct??

# re: Another SharePoint Workflow Engine + Workflow Lite Update

Thursday, July 08, 2004 1:56 AM by Jan

Tasia, yes it works even without Office! But of course you won't get the neat integration with Office 2003.