SharePoint “15” App Model – Introduction



MACROBUTTON AcceptAllChangesInDoc Microsoft SharePoint 2013 - Workflow ToolsVerified Against Build #15.0.4128.1014Prepared bySriram BalaSharePoint PracticeTable of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u Workflow for SharePoint | Nintex PAGEREF _Toc385145140 \h 3Features PAGEREF _Toc385145141 \h 3Workflow for SharePoint | NintexNintex Workflow adds a drag-and-drop workflow designer, connectivity and advanced workflow features to the Microsoft SharePoint platform. Business users and IT Professionals alike will be empowered to quickly and easily automate business processes; from a simple leave approval request, to complex integration across external applications, cloud services and data sources.FeaturesQUICK & EASYDRAW IT, NOT CODE ITEmpower all SharePoint users to automate their own processes in minutes through intuitive, easy to use, browser based drag-and-drop workflow designer.BUILT ON SHAREPOINTWORK BETTER, INVEST SMARTProtect your SharePoint investment through simple deployment and management, while avoiding additional infrastructure and client software costs.CONNECTEDSYSTEMS AND CLOUD INTEGRATIONConnect Nintex Workflow to Office 365, external systems, Exchange server, Lync server, databases, web services, and a world of cloud services seamlessly.?MEASURE & MANAGESee real-time status of workflowsMeasure and improve business performanceRAPID ROIReduced IT burdenEfficiency gains and reduced processing costsDESIGN?ONCE, USE MANYReusable templates and modulesShare and align business practices across teamsThe Right Product for Your Needs:??Nintex Workflow is available in three editions, Enterprise, Standard, and Workgroup designed to meet the needs of any organization, from small teams to global enterprises. You can start small and scale up and out as required, without disruption. The?Nintex Workflow Edition Comparison Table?provides an overview of product features available per edition.??Product FeaturesIntegrated SharePoint Features:Ribbon interface?Business Connectivity ServicesExcel ServicesInfoPath formsReusable, Site, List and Content type?workflowsDocument sets???Connect with Other Systems:Provision users in Active Directory, Exchange Server, Office Communications Server?and Microsoft Lync server?Read and write data from Microsoft CRMEasily access data and processes from line of business and external systems using web services, SQL, LDAP, XML , BizTalk and other common middleware and open interfaces?Extend and Customize:Create “User Defined Actions” using the drag and drop workflow designerExport workflows to Visual StudioA wide range of third-party add-ons, extensions, and connectors are available from our global partner network?right000???Workflow Forms Made Easy:Combine Nintex Forms with Nintex Workflow to transform workflows into rich business applications. Nintex Forms automatically generates the required elements for Nintex Workflow forms, and allows workflow variables to be used as form data. For more information on Nintex Forms go toformsConnect Nintex Workflow to Office 365 and a World of Cloud Services:Nintex Live extends Nintex Workflow to connect SharePoint to Office 365 and a potentially infinite number of cloud-based services such as Yammer, Twitter, Bing, business and government information services.Using Nintex Live, organizations can build hybrid on-premise and cloud solutions. For more information visitlive?Additional Features:Exclusive LazyApproval? System, respond to requests in real language, even when mobile and without SharePoint portal accessAd hoc delegation of workflow tasks to users, directly or scheduledScheduled and timed workflows for repeated processesRich workflow notifications using email, instant messenger and SMSProcess diagram annotation and print viewCustomizable toolbox with search and resizeNintex Workflow CreationNintex workflow product that integrates seamlessly into the SharePoint user interface so it does not require using Visual Studio or SharePoint Designer. Nintex Workflow provides an intuitive visual interface that makes creating and maintaining workflows much easier.For this article I will start from the beginning and show how to customize the workflow start itself by creating variables and customizing the start form. Let’s get started from the beginning. You will want to start in a list or library, in my case I am starting out in a document library. So we will go to Workflow Settings and select “Create a Workflow in Nintex Workflow”.When prompted I selected a Blank Template for my workflow. At this point you will see a screen that is similar to flow chart in Visio. The Actions are on the left and the flow chart is in the main part of the screen. At this point I am not going to add any actions I will do that later. In the ribbon click Workflow Settings.In the Workflow Setting screen, enter a Title for your workflow, a Description of the purpose of the workflow and select the workflow options that you require, in this case I have select Start Manually, and set Start when items are created and Start when items are modified to “No” so that I can have a custom start form.?Now we can add some variables to be populated on the start screen. In the ribbon click “Variables”.?I am going to create a few person selector fields, 3 Approvers and a Project Manager. In the Workflow Variable screen click New and then give the field a Name, select “Person or Group” for the Type, Select “Show on start form”, Select “Required”, and I am choosing “Any User” and “Allow Users” but you can set these however you want.?After doing this for all 3 Approvers and a Project Manager and adding an Approval Text field (Single Line of Text) your Workflow Variable screen should look like this.?At this point, you can close the Workflow Variables screen. We are now going to customize the Start Form so click the drop down arrow on the Edit Start Form button in the ribbon and select Edit with Nintex Forms.?This will bring up the Nintex Forms – Form Designer. From here you can make whatever changes you would like to the Start Form. For now I just changes some label and made a few other minor changes.?Click Save and then Click Close. Click Save in the Workflow Setting screen. Now we will add just a simple logging action so we can publish our workflow and test the new Start Form.Log in History List is located in the Operations Group so either open that group and on the left and drag the Log in History List action to the open square in the workflow or right-click on the square and select the action from there.Notice the exclamation point in the Log in history list item once you have placed it in your workflow. This indicates that you need to do some configuration on that action. Click on the drop down arrow on the action and select Configure.You can enter any text you want in the text box and insert variables and meta-data values from the associated list item. In this case I just want to log who the Project Manager is. I type the text “The Project Manager for this is: ” and then click the Insert Reference button. Notice the tabs at the top that give you several different options for the source of the information to insert. Click the Workflow Variables tab and then select ProjectManager and click OK.?Click Save and you should now see that the exclamation point has gone away. Now we have a very simple workflow that we can publish. Click the Publish button in the ribbon, enter any Change Comments and click Submit. After the workflow has published you can click the Close button in the ribbon to exit Nintex Workflow. If you now go back into the list/library in which you created the workflow and add an item or upload a file we can test the workflow. Click the drop down arrow on the file name and select Workflows.?Click on the workflow you just created.?You should see the Start screen that you created. Select users for the 3 Approvers and the Project Manager and add some Approval Text and click Start. You can then go into the Workflow Information screen by clicking the drop down arrow next to the file name, selecting Workflows and then Clicking on your workflow in the bottom section “Completed Workflows”.?You should now see in the workflow history section and event with a description that tells you who you selected as a Project Manager.?Just to recap, in this blog post I showed you how to create a Nintex Workflow, Set some basic properties, Add Variables, Edit the Start Form, Add and Configure a basic Action, Publish and run you workflow. Workflows in SharePoint 2013 and the role of NintexThe SharePoint 2013 workflow platformSharePoint 2013 supports two workflow platforms:-The first platform is very similar to the SharePoint 2010 workflow platform.All workflows built in SharePoint 2010 will continue to work in SharePoint 2010.Creating new workflows in SharePoint 2013 will be very similar to how to create?workflows for SharePoint 2010.This is the default platform that is installed when first setting up a SharePoint 2013 environment.To support more than out-of-the-box workflows an on premise installation is required.The second platform is a separate service called?Workflow Manager.Workflow Manager can be an on-premise set of servers or an Azure hosted service that communicates with the SharePoint server farm.The main advantages of using the workflow manager is that it gives the ability for workflows to scale and provides a level of isolation: i.e., in the event a rogue workflow consumes all server resources, the performance of the SharePoint farm is not impacted.For an on-premise server architecture this is what it may look like:Visio 2013 and SharePoint Designer 2013Microsoft has made it easier to create workflows in Visio 2013 with a new SharePoint 2013 workflow template. The idea is that a business analyst will use Visio to document (by creating workflow actions) the behavior of the business process. Once this is completed the same Visio file is given to a developer who will then take the workflow actions as defined by the analyst, open it in SharePoint Designer 2013, and for each action will create the necessary workflow activities. Publishing of newer activities with respect to workflow versioning (i.e., respecting updating a workflow that has instances still in progress) can be accomplished by code.So how does Nintex Workflow fit into all of this?Nintex has made it easy for anyone to create and publish workflows. A new workflow can be created in a browser without the need for Visio or SharePoint Designer. Nintex Workflow supports both platforms as mentioned previously:Similar to SharePoint 2010, there is the?Nintex Workflow 2013?product that has all the Nintex Work flow 2010 actions and more options for mobile, social, and cloud.?If none of the many Nintex actions meets the needs of the customer, this product allows for creating custom activities in code and?using them in the Nintex workflow. There is an excellent SDK to help with this.?There is a new Nintex Workflow online app (to be released soon, preview available now) that will run in the cloud.Essentially this is leveraging all the out-of-the-box capabilities of the SharePoint 2013?workflow coupled with cloud services exposed by the Nintex Live catalogue.It is not possible to create custom activities in code and upload them to the cloud due to the limitations of?Azure hosted services.Nintex does not store the workflow in the cloud but rather the workflow definitions are stored in the SharePoint database online. The SharePoint workflow engine reads and executes these in real-time.Workflow ActionsThe workflow actions that are supported in SharePoint 2013 are listed here: is important to note that it is not possible to create a custom workflow activity in code and host it on Azure for security reasons. This is only supported for on-premise platforms.SummaryAlthough Microsoft has made it easier to create workflows in SharePoint 2013, there is still a heavy reliance on a developer creating, deploying, and supporting SharePoint workflows whether they are on-premise or in the cloud.Nintex has made it easy for anyone to create a workflow and since their products are built on top of the Microsoft SharePoint workflow platform they are able to support both on-premise and Azure hosted workflows. is just x32, the only x64 K2 uses is on Workspace and the sharepoint components.Now, If you want to compare Workflow engines, drop nintex as it is not in the same leagure as K2 : )Now nintex = web browser based workflow designs, blackpearl comes with the SharePoint designer which has been beefed up since the old ajax designer in early pearl days."On the nintex home page I read this and I will now demonstrate exactly why K2 is superiorAutomate business processesSee real-time feedback of workflow activitiesCreate workflows in hours not daysAutomate common SharePoint administrative tasksGenerate rich enterprise-level reportingDraw it, not code it"Here is how K2 compares.K2 is bpm software and microsoft stated in a teched session discussing SharePoint 2010 workflow engine , "We are not k2", view workflows in real-time, well of course K2 does that, you can even go as far as pulling reports on the workflow in progress, K2 is fast if you know how to use it, your other options states, hours not days, with K2 I can say, in minutes not hours, automate sharepoint admin tasks, well nintex has an upperhand there I think, but on the other hand being a SharePoint developer I have never heard of a client wanting/needing this functionality, usually SharePoint admins do their work before any thing even touches their environment(Admin mentality there :P), on the reporting side, I have no experience with nintex reporting, but I do have extensive experience with K2 reports, seeing as I worked for K2 for 3 years(awesome company btw), you can do anything using K2, you get the OOB reports which covers the basics, then you get the reports designer which takes it a step further where you can customize the reports to suite your needs, then you get the SmartObject reporting which again old every single piece of data in the k2 databases regarding any process, the latter only ships with blackpearl. a comparision standpoint:Architecture - K2 has a very mature model - Yes 64bit and integration with WSS.? K2 blackpoint server uses .Net 3.0 Framework (WF & WFP)? Blackpoint has a distributed model for Path Integration - Yes, the InfoPath Integration Wizards are accessible within the K2 Studio environment, allowing easy configuration of a business process application that uses an InfoPath form template. K2 blackpoint specific items are added to the InfoPath form template so that new instances of that form are able to be submitted and date can be retrieved from K2 blackpoint. Any information managed within the InfoPath form is accessible within K2 blackpoint, providing access to all data elements and allowing dynamic routing, rule validation, population of line-of-business systems and reportingOther Actions - the blackpoint road map for the vnext will allow have built in functionality to create AD & Exchange accounts.K2 Support is hands down - ?some of the best in the industry.? Extremely responsive, honest and will to work around your hectic schedule.The blackpoint road map looks solid and packed full of great features to build some great workflows.?JW ................
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