Can Microsoft Windows Workflow route to specific workstations?

Question

I want to write a workflow application that routes a link to a document. The routing is based upon machines not users because I don't know who will ever be at a given post. For example, I have a form. It is initially filled out in location A. I now want it to go to location B and have them fill out the rest. Finally, it goes to location C where a supervisor will approve it.

None of these locations has a known user. That is I don't know who it will be. I only know that whomever it is is authorized (they are assigned to the workstation and are approved to be there.)

Will Microsoft Windows Workflow do this or do I need to build my own workflow based on SQL Server, IP Addresses, and so forth?

Also, How would the user at a workstation be notified a document had been sent to their machine?

Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

You can design a generic "routing" workflow that will cause data to go to a workstation. The easiest way to do this would be to embed the workflow in an ASP.NET application. Each workstation should visit the application with a workstation ID in the querystring:

http://myapp/default.aspx?wid=01

When the form is filled out at workstation A, the workflow running in the web app can enter it into the "work bin" of the next workstation. Anyone sitting at the computer for which the form is destined will see it appear in their list of forms to review. You can use AJAX to make it slick and auto-updating.

Answer 2

You might also want to look at human workflow engines, as they are designed to do things such as this (and more), I'm most familiar with PNMsoft's Sequence

Answer 3

I think if I was approaching this problem workflow would work to do it. It is a state machine you want that has three states:

• A Start
• B Completing
• C Approving

However workflow needs to work in one central place (trust me on this, you only want to have one workflow run time running at once, otherwise the same bit of work can be done multiple times see our questions on MSDN forum). So a central server running the workflow is the answer.

How you present this to the users can be done in multiple ways. Dave suggested using an ASP.NET site to identify the machines that are doing the work, which is probably how I would do it. However you could also write a windows forms client that would do the same thing. This would require using something like SOAP / WCF to facilitate communication between client form applications and the central workflow service. This would have the advantage that you could use a system try icon to alert the user.