Need technology recommendation/suggestion

Question

My company is in need of a task management system to handle scenarios as simple as "Purchase a computer for X" to "Relocate a person to another country". The simple scenarios are a single tasks handled by a single person, whereas bigger tasks can be broken down into multiple sub tasks delegated to multiple people during the workflow. Additionally the clients and vendors need their own views into the process.

We are evaluating different solutions from a custom application built on Workflow Foundation to SharePoint to BPM products like Metastorm and BPM.Net.

Here's my current understanding of these solutions:

1. Workflow Foundation - Low level workflow designer and/or library with no host environment. It seems we would have to reinvent some wheels if we went this route such as fault tolerance and document management. Some of the answers on stack also cause concerns such as the lack of versioning and a complete overhaul for VS10/.NET 4.0
2. SharePoint - Built for document management and collaboration but trying to create advanced workflows and tasking on top of that seems like a hack. Plus all workflows have to be tied to either documents or lists. I cant envision how a list (or list of lists) can address this issue.
3. BPM products - Mature workflow engine at a seemingly high price. BPM.Net is the only solution for which I could find some level of technical detail but im still not sure how different developing against this product would be from developing against Workflow Foundation.

Are there any workflow engines dedicated to solving all the workflow pains that can be easily deployed with their own hosting environment and initiated through a webservice?

Are there any other options I am missing?

Thanks in advance.

**Edit

To answer the questions below the workflow needs are pretty light. Basic routing of tasks to approvers and subcontractors. Whats driving us too look deeper than PM software is the nature of the business not the need for advanced workflow. We are basically in the business of procuring goods and services through subcontractors for our clients which can also include full employee relocation. The interface of the package should reflect this by being customer branded as well as intuitive for this line of business.

Basically if im moving my family to the other side of the world Im not sure i'd want to interface with Jira or Sharepoint or any other PM software to facilitate this.

Answer 1

We use Captaris Workflow, it is pretty good but it may be expensive for your needs.

Answer 2

Nothing you mentioned has much to do with workflow. You're just doing project management. If that's the case, a simple bug tracker (like FogBugz! ;) would work - but if you're going to show it externally, it may not be the most professional presentation.

The closest off the shelf solution I can think of would be Project Server - though, depending on the number of projects and project managers, the desktop Project with a sync to a webserver for client views may be enough.

If that's overkill - because your projects don't require a lot of resource scheduling, Gantt charts, or other PM artifacts - you can take something like Trac and replace "bug" with "task". ;) (Seriously though, that'd probably get you 90% of the way there.....)

Answer 3

Have you looked at RT? I believe it can handle all your requirements, including that it's designed to let customers interact with the system by email, rather than having to log into the website. If you've emailed IT support desks then you've probably interacted with it without knowing... You can also completely customise the web interface and allow customer access.

Answer 4

The next version of windows workflow will have it's own runtime environment, code name dublin, with will provide a WCF interface into the workflows.

If your timeframe allows you could use that.

For information on Dublin and the next version of WF see:

http://www.microsoft.com/net/dublin.aspx

Answer 5

Can't vouch for the quality as I haven't used it, but I did watch an online-demo video of Intalio, which has BPM and workflow capabilities.

Answer 6

I have/am going through a similar process. We wanted a lightweight workflow for internal use by our sales team. Most of the third party apps we looked at ,K2 and Skelta BPM.Net in particular, looked way over the top for what we needed. I'm now 2 months into working with Windows Workflow Foundation 3.0 and I have to say it isn't the most pleasant coding experience I've had.

If your workflows will truely be simple then it is pretty easy to build a workflow and hook it up to some web pages for the UI. But if you need to be able to change it on the fly, or do versioning (ie the user says we want another step added, then its a whole lot of hacking to get it to work - and it only works if you limit your workflow to being really simple), then you are in for a fair bit of work. And forget about it if you use an Oracle database.

Answer 7

My vote is for FogBugz. Unless I am missing something in your requirements, why would you want to reinvent the wheel by using a code based workflow solution where you have to code up the flows yourself when you can use a perfectly good project dependency solution like FB or even MS Project Server - which lets you create nice dependencies for resources and people.

Answer 8

Check FileNet

FileNet is expensive but makes a good job with content and process management, but I guess is not what you are looking for.

Answer 9

We use Basecamp to control this sort of "task management" stuff. I'm not sure if it fits your needs totally, as it's a little light on the document management side, but it has a web service (REST) API, customer / vendor facing components, and basic interaction / chat capabilities.

The best part about it is that the API is simple enough where you can offload a lot of the "management" for it to admin support personnel, like assistants and interns, by providing custom scripts. If you've got people who aren't programmers using it you'll probably have better luck with it than even something like Trac or FogBugz.

Answer 10

If you are on Microsoft stack I would definitely recommend SharePoint for this scenario. As it seems to be very simple you can go with Windows SharePoint Services edition because it is free and it has everything you need.

You are right when you say that ShartePoint workflow are bit limited. IMHO the best way to overcome that limitation is to purchase Nintex workflow to create your workflows. It is cost effective solution that can help you design workflows you need. You can find workflow samples inside the product (as workflow templates) and on the web site.