SharePoint Designer 2010: Building Custom Workflows

See how to boost your productivity and efficiency using self-monitoring document workflows in SharePoint.

See how to boost your productivity and efficiency using self-monitoring document workflows in SharePoint. Author Gini Courter explains how to design streamlined workflows, from analyzing inefficiencies in manual processes to leveraging automation to avoid performing tedious, repetitive tasks. The course also covers setting up forms and email notifications, collecting and working with user data, performing calculations, and making workflows reusable.

Welcome

• Welcome
• What you need to know
• The workflows used in this course

1. Understanding Workflows

• What's a workflow?
• Using manual vs. automated workflows
• Workflow automation in SharePoint 2010

2. Documenting Workflows for Automation

• Flowcharting or outlining workflow steps
• Using Excel or the Office Drawing Tools to document workflow design
• Using Visio to document workflow design
• Identifying areas for workflow improvement
• Driving workflow interactions with forms

3. Running SharePoint Built-In Workflows

• Setting workflow options
• Running the Three-state workflow
• Overview of the built-in workflows

4. Getting Started with SharePoint Designer

• Launching SharePoint Designer 2010
• Opening a SharePoint site, list, or library

5. Using Workflow Actions and Conditions

• Understanding SharePoint workflows
• Understanding events that start workflows
• Understanding workflow steps
• Understanding workflow actions
• Creating a simple workflow using the Send an Email action
• Setting task and history log settings
• Creating a workflow using the Wait for Field Change action
• Using conditions to make a choice
• Using advanced conditions: IF, THEN, and ELSE
• Creating a workflow with conditions
• Using parallel blocks

6. Creating a Simple Form for Your Workflow

• Using a built-in SharePoint list form
• Using InfoPath to create a form for a library
• Creating a form library from InfoPath

7. Using Email Notifications

• Emailing the form's submitter
• Emailing a person in a group
• Using a contacts list for email workflow lookups
• Using Outlook rules to manage workflow messages

8. Using Core Actions in Workflows

• Pausing a workflow
• Understanding workflow variables
• Creating workflow variables
• Using Do Calculation
• Calculating and setting times
• Setting workflow status
• Stopping a workflow

9. Using List and Utility Actions in Workflows

• Creating a new list item
• Checking items in and out
• Setting field values
• Copying and deleting list items
• Waiting for a change to a list item
• Finding an interval
• Updating list items
• Extracting substrings

10. Getting Data from Users

• Collecting data from a user
• Assigning a task to a user

11. Creating Easy-to-Maintain Workflows

• Using email aliases for easy workflow maintenance
• Adding a comment
• Writing to the workflow log
• Checking workflow logs
• Creating error traps in workflows
• Modifying existing workflows
• Removing workflow instances
• Terminating a workflow instance

12. Creating Reusable Workflows

• Creating a reusable workflow
• Assigning association columns to a reusable workflow
• Creating a custom content type for a workflow
• Associating a reusable workflow or content type with a list
• Creating a site workflow

13. Using Visio Premium 2010 for Visual Workflow Design

• Exporting SharePoint Designer workflows into Visio
• Using the SharePoint workflow template to design a workflow
• Publishing the workflow as a web page for feedback
• Importing a Visio workflow into SharePoint Designer

Conclusion

• What's next?