malindesilva@live.com

Tips and Tricks for Building Visual Studio Workflows

Malin De Silva

SharePoint Specialist

Exilesoft, Sri LankaBusiness 365 Saturday - Singapore

24th October 2015

About Me

Planning, Development and administering experience since SharePoint 2007.

Speaker at many forums and conferences.

Blogger, StackExchange contributor and a big Azure fan.

Agenda

• Introduction to Workflows

• Creating Visual Studio Workflows

• Using REST API References

• Working with Tasks

• Challenges and Best Practices

malindesilva@live.com

Who are we?

• Developers?

• Have built Workflows? (Designer or Visual Studio)

• Have built Visual Studio Workflows in 2013?

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2010 vs 2013 Workflows

SharePoint 2010 SharePoint 2013

Coupled to SharePoint servers Decoupled (Other consuming platforms)

Declarative or Custom Code Declarative

SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint Server

SharePoint Server

Content Types No

No Apps App Friendly

.Net framework used by SharePoint (.Net3.51)

.Net Framework xxx

Workflow runs inside SharePoint Workflows run outside SharePoint

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Designer 2013 vs Visual Studio

SharePoint Designer 2013 Visual Studio

Power Users, SharePoint Developers SharePoint Developers

Can use Visio Can’t

Cannot debug Can debug, including SharePoint Online

No ALM support Full ALM support

Cannot be a part of apps Can be a part of apps

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Workflow Development and Debugging Prerequisites

• SharePoint Farm

• Workflow Manager Farm connected

• Visual Studio 2012 or later

• Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2013

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DEVELOPMENT

On-premises

• Allow Workflow Manager Tools to access through firewall

SharePoint Online

• May require installing a proxy client

• Create Azure Service Bus namespace

DEBUGGING

Demonstration

Creating Visual Studio Workflows and Defining Variables

REST API References

• Any technology supports standard REST capabilities

• Mapping with client object model

• Client object model method:

List.GetByTitle(listname)

• REST endpoint:

http://server/site/_api/lists/getbytitle('listname')

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Operation HTTP Method (s)

Read a resource GET

Create a resource POST

Update a resource PUT, MERGE

Delete a resource DELETE

REST API Examples

Operation HTTP Type Example

Read lists in a web GET http://malin.sharepoint.com/_api/lists

Creates a list POST http://malin.sharepoint.com/_api/lists

{'_metadata':{'type':SP.List},'AllowContentTypes': true,'BaseTemplate': 104,'ContentTypesEnabled':

true,'Description': 'My list

description','Title': 'RestTest'

}malindesilva@live.com

Demonstration

Accessing current item and using REST API references

Working with Workflow Tasks

• Content type changes

• Task Workflow Task (SharePoint 2013)

• Workflow Task content type has two new columns

• WorkfowInstanceId

• TaskOutcome

• Two types of tasks

• Single task

• Composite task

• Custom task forms

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Demonstration

Working with Workflow Tasks

Custom Declarative Activities

• Richer market needs

• Repeatable design needs

• Develop and deploy to business market

• Use activities and actions

• .actions4 files

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Workflow Best Practices

• Log as much as you can

• Scope workflow variables

• Ensure User when assigning tasks

• Design with failures in mind

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Challenges We Faced

• Long running workflows

• HTTP 429 too many requests

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Questions?

malindesilva@live.com

Thank You!

Malin De Silva

SharePoint Specialist

Exilesoft

mds@Exilesoft.com/ malindesilva@live.com

@MalinD19