So I needed to setup a quick demo of the new SharePoint 2007, InfoPath 2007 and workflow. The task was simple – create an InfoPath form with a few fields, save the form to a SharePoint form library with certain fields promoted so they would be visible to the workflow logic, then create a workflow that routes the form data through a typical business process.
My problem, I had less than an hour to pull it all together.
I know what you’re thinking. Why only an hour? Long story. But the short answer is – SharePoint Designer 2007 came to my rescue. Big time.
It’s amazing to me how persistent the Microsoft guys are. Someone in Redmond is apparently convinced that FrontPage (I mean, “SharePoint Designer”) is the must-have tool that will drive the new workflow paradigm.Well, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool .Net developer and I’ve had nothing but pessimism about the whole FrontPage/Designer approach – until now, that is.
Faced with certain humiliation, I decided to fire up the beast and see what she had to say. I started by creating the demo site. Then I opened an InfoPath 2003 form using InfoPath 2007, ran the publishing wizard and promoted the fields I was interested in to a new form library in the demo site. Finally, I opened the site in SharePoint Designer 2007, selected File-New-Workflow and used the built-in workflow designer to create my workflow and attach it to the form library. About 15 minutes later, I had a custom workflow running flawlessly.
If you’ve been thinking about workflow development, this is definitely the way to go, especially for prototyping complex interactions between InfoPath form fields and SharePoint lists. I’m not yet ready to recommend putting these workflows into production, but maybe – just maybe.
Now I’m itching to examine the generated XOML files more closely to see what makes everything tick.
Stay tuned.
