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14

answers:

1

Sharepoint noob question - apparently I can't even figure out how to google for the answer.

We have a custom application in which we need to route entities for 'approval'. There are currently no electronic documents that correspond to our entities. They live in our database and are displayed via screens in our app. Simple enough.

Now we want to develop an approval process through which our entites are routed to various parties for approval. (i.e. say there is a price sheet in our system that has 'below floor' pricing...we want that price sheet to be approved by a sales manager before it can be used.)

Is it possible (or even appropriate) to try to wire up WSS with our custom app so that our app can somehow create the approval request in WSS and then we can use WSS as a front-end for our users to know when they need to address an approval request? Everything I have seen seems to involve some type of underlying electronic document. I don't expect WSS to display the details of the entities...just the fact that the entity in question needs approval.

What I don't want to do is write a custom workflow / approval system inside our app. If someone could just throw me a bone telling me the right questions to start asking it'd be helpful.

The app is C# on SQL Server backend.

A: 

I would suggest creating a link type of item, that points to your backend system item and run the approval process on that link, it is the easiest solution. If you want, you can create a custom activity for SPD to update a field in the backend system item (that should be simple enough, relatively small code), but this is of course not required

Vladi Gubler