Sharepoint Workflow Vs. WFF

Question

The title is not very accurate. I am currently developing an addition to a site that allows multiple people to enter data. I need/want to use WFF, because the people will enter the data in a certain sequence. It is a customer complaint form. A salesman will fill out the initial form and submit the complaint. The complaint will be reviewed and either dismissed or moved forward to the investigation segment. Finally the complaint will be handled and closed.

My dilemma is that I am also implementing Sharepoint. Both projects are due around the same time. Ultimately Sharepoint will be our only website, and the complaint project moved to Sharepoint.

I would rather wait until after Sharepoint is in place then pursue the customer complaint project. We will have to rearrange the Sharepoint project to include workflow, from the beginning instead of implementing it later.

Any thought, suggestions, comments of any kind?

Answer 1

Essentially SharePoint is a hosting engine for Windows Workflow Foundation. There are some elements that you need to include when developing a WWF workflow that you require to run on the SharePoint workflow engine but you could build these into your project as you know that this workflow will be ported to SharePoint at some point.

However, by the time you have implemented the UI components to allow your workflow to operate (forms etc.), and the engine to run it in you might as well have just deployed it all with a minimal WSS 3.0 installation.

My advice, design your WWF workflow in Visual Studio to run within the SharePoint workflow engine and take advantage of the infrastruture that comes with it. Otherwise you will spend additional weeks on your complaints project that will soon become redundant when you port over to SharePoint.

A good overview article can be found here.

Answer 2

Thanks, Charles.

I glanced over the article and it looks good. You gave me some information I didn't have, namely that Sharepoint is a hosting engine for workflow. The pieces of the puzzle are now starting to fit together and with the article I think I'm set.