SharePoint Designer 2013: Custom Workflows

Design workflows that boost your team's productivity with SharePoint Designer.

See how to boost your team's productivity using custom workflows in Microsoft SharePoint. Gini Courter explains how to design workflows in SharePoint Designer, and eliminate inefficiencies and leverage automation to avoid repetitive tasks. You'll learn to create a simple form for your workflow, set up email notifications, and work with list and utility actions. Gini also shows how to design workflows that are easy to maintain and reusable, and deploy your workflows into the wild in SharePoint.

Introduction

• Welcome
• What you need to know
• Using the exercise files

1. Understanding Workflows

• What's a workflow?
• Automating workflows
• Course workflows and tools

2. Documenting Workflows for Automation

• Documenting a workflow with Sticky Notes
• Using Excel to document workflow design
• Using Visio to document workflow design
• Driving workflow interactions with forms

3. Running a Built-In SharePoint Workflow

• Exploring the three-state workflow
• Running the three-state workflow

4. Getting Started with SharePoint Designer

• Installing SharePoint Designer
• Opening a SharePoint site, list, or library

5. Using Workflow Actions

• Understanding workflow types and permissions
• Understanding events that start workflows
• Understanding stages and steps
• Understanding workflow actions
• Creating a workflow with SharePoint Designer that sends an email
• Saving and publishing your workflow
• Testing your workflow
• Setting task and history log settings
• Creating a workflow using the Wait for Field Change action
• Adding comments

6. Using Conditions

• Using conditions to make a choice
• Using conditions to control flow
• Creating a workflow with conditions
• Using the Else branch
• Using parallel blocks
• Using loops

7. Creating a Simple Form for Your Workflow

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

8. Using Email Notifications

• Emailing the submitter
• Emailing other recipients
• Retrieving an email address from a list
• Using Outlook rules to manage workflow messages

9. Using Other Core Actions

• Pausing a workflow
• Understanding workflow variables
• Overview: Order Business Cards workflow
• Creating workflow variables
• Calculating with numbers using Do Calculation
• Calculating dates and times using Add Time to Date
• Completing the Order Business Cards workflow
• Setting workflow status

10. Using Dictionary Actions

• Building a dictionary
• Counting items in a dictionary
• Getting an item from a dictionary

11. Using List, Task, and Utility Actions in Workflows

• Creating a new list item
• Setting field values
• Assigning a task to a user
• Assigning a task to multiple users
• Adding DateTime columns to the workflow
• Finding an interval between two times or dates
• Updating list items
• Extracting substrings

12. Strategies and Techniques for Easy-to-Maintain Workflows

• Using the workflow history
• Using email aliases for easy workflow maintenance
• Preventing workflow errors
• Modifying existing workflows
• Managing workflows: Blocking, removing, and reinstating

13. Workflows Beyond a Single List

• Creating a reusable workflow
• Creating a site workflow
• Packaging a workflow in SharePoint Designer
• Deploying a workflow in SharePoint

14. Creating Workflows Visually

• Creating a SharePoint workflow in Visio 2013
• Validating the workflow in Visio
• Importing and customizing a Visio workflow in SharePoint Designer

Conclusion

• Next steps