Using Workflow 4 as a Controller in MVC

Question

Hi

I'm building an app that deals with customer queries, where I want to route the query through a decision tree showing appropriate views before taking some automated action against their query. Kind of like the game "20 questions"! Based on the answers at each stage, the path through the app will change.

I was thinking of using MVC, because there are only a few "types" of route and outcome - so I could build fewer pages that way, one to handle each type rather than one for each step. I was also thinking of using Workflow 4 to manage the page flow, because the flowchart model maps pretty nicely to what I'm trying to do.

Does anyone know any good reference apps that use Workflow for this kind of thing?

Thanks

Richard

Answer 1

There where a number of examples using WF3 doing this sort of thing but I haven't seen any for WF4. I suppose it is possible to do but it means running the workflow synchronously and checking the bookmarks as soon as it becomes idle to see which operations are enabled at the moment. That should be possible using a custom SynchronizationContext that does things synchronous and using the Idle callback on the WorklfowApplication to check the current bookmarks.

Answer 2

I actually went with a different option in the end - I wrote a "GetNextAction" function that returned an ActionResult object based on my flowchart logic and state of objects. The controller processes whatever form inputs it's received, updates the object, then calls GetNextAction and returns the result of that function. Seems to be working out ok!