Windows Workflow Authoring

Three important groups of users can be distinguished when it comes to creating workflows: knowledge workers, site administrators and Web designers, and developers. The following list describes the most likely division of responsibilities of these groups:

• Knowledge workers This group of users consists of people who will create ad hoc workflow solutions based on the predefined workflows already available in SharePoint Designer 2007. The complexity of these workflows will be low.

• Site administrators and Web designers This group will use SharePoint Designer 2007 to create custom workflows for a specific list or library. The complexity of such workflows will be average.

• Developers Developers will primarily use Visual Studio 2005 Designer to program their own workflows, custom code, and activities. Developers can use Visual Studio 2005 Designer to create highly complex workflows.

Workflows authored in SharePoint Designer 2007 differ from those created using the Visual Studio 2005 Designer for Windows Workflow Foundation in several important ways:

• In SharePoint Designer 2007, a workflow cannot be deployed to multiple lists. Such workflows are valid only for the list for which they were created.

• In SharePoint Designer 2007, you are authoring the workflow directly against a list and the workflow is associated with the list or library at design time. After the association is made, workflows are allowed to be run on items within the list or library. Workflows created using Visual Studio 2005 Designer have to be associated explicitly with a list or library through configuration. The advantage of the latter approach is that a workflow can be associated with multiple lists and libraries.

• You cannot modify workflows authored in SharePoint Designer 2007. Workflow modifications are explained in the "What Is Different" section later in this chapter.

• You cannot associate a workflow to a content type using SharePoint Designer 2007. Associating a workflow to a content type means that each list to which a content type is added inherits the workflows associated to the content type at that time. Workflow associations update according to the rules of content type push down. In other words, if the administrator makes a change to a content type, he can choose to push down this change.