SUPPORT FOR LOOPING IN SHAREPOINT DESIGNER
A well-known limitation in previous versions of SharePoint Designer was the inability to create loops. This missing feature was often by itself enough to cause companies to look at workflow providers like Nintex, AgilePoint, and K2, or write complicated workflows in Visual Studio. Now SharePoint Designer-based workflows can loop a specific number of times, or until a specific condition is satisfied. If you are the nesting type, you can even put loops inside of loops. All joking aside, this is a great addition that opens up the types of workflows that can be created with SharePoint Designer.
A well-known limitation in previous versions of SharePoint Designer was the inability to create loops. This missing feature was often by itself enough to cause companies to look at workflow providers like Nintex, AgilePoint, and K2, or write complicated workflows in Visual Studio. Now SharePoint Designer-based workflows can loop a specific number of times, or until a specific condition is satisfied. If you are the nesting type, you can even put loops inside of loops. All joking aside, this is a great addition that opens up the types of workflows that can be created with SharePoint Designer.
VISUAL DESIGNER
Until now, SharePoint Designer has always been a text based tool. With SharePoint 2013 comes the introduction of Visual Designer. As with the majority of features discussed here, the Visual Designer can only be used when creating SharePoint 2013 workflows. Additionally, you need Visio 2013 Professional to use this tool. The Visual Designer itself is generally what you would expect – drag and drop of shapes that you then configure as needed. Many users will find this visual approach much easier to use and understand than the traditional text-based view.
Until now, SharePoint Designer has always been a text based tool. With SharePoint 2013 comes the introduction of Visual Designer. As with the majority of features discussed here, the Visual Designer can only be used when creating SharePoint 2013 workflows. Additionally, you need Visio 2013 Professional to use this tool. The Visual Designer itself is generally what you would expect – drag and drop of shapes that you then configure as needed. Many users will find this visual approach much easier to use and understand than the traditional text-based view.
STAGES
Stages provide a way to group logical sections of a workflow to reduce complexity. A workflow can contain a single stage or multiple stages depending on its complexity. Each stage holds various actions and concludes with a gate which determines where the workflow should go next. If you have created and modified complex workflows in previous versions of SharePoint Designer, you’ll appreciate this feature.
Stages provide a way to group logical sections of a workflow to reduce complexity. A workflow can contain a single stage or multiple stages depending on its complexity. Each stage holds various actions and concludes with a gate which determines where the workflow should go next. If you have created and modified complex workflows in previous versions of SharePoint Designer, you’ll appreciate this feature.
CALLING WEB SERVICES
Increasingly, SharePoint solutions reach out to other enterprise systems to gather and display data that is important to the user. This data is typically accessed through web services, and SharePoint Designer has added new functionality to support this. A new action called “Call HTTP Web Service” is available in SharePoint Designer to allow web service calls. This is another feature that opens up the power of workflows without requiring a third party tool or custom code.
Increasingly, SharePoint solutions reach out to other enterprise systems to gather and display data that is important to the user. This data is typically accessed through web services, and SharePoint Designer has added new functionality to support this. A new action called “Call HTTP Web Service” is available in SharePoint Designer to allow web service calls. This is another feature that opens up the power of workflows without requiring a third party tool or custom code.
BETTER SCALABILITY
A workflow is no good if it doesn’t run because the environment can’t scale to handle increasing demands. The entire architecture for workflow processing has been reworked in SharePoint 2013. For example, SharePoint 2013 workflows are no longer hosted by SharePoint; instead, they are hosted by Windows Azure Workflow, which is installed separately from SharePoint 2013. Your SharePoint and Windows Azure Workflow environments work together to execute workflows triggered in SharePoint. The details get technical, but the important point is that workflow scalability is dramatically improved and you can be confident using SharePoint workflows at the enterprise level.
A workflow is no good if it doesn’t run because the environment can’t scale to handle increasing demands. The entire architecture for workflow processing has been reworked in SharePoint 2013. For example, SharePoint 2013 workflows are no longer hosted by SharePoint; instead, they are hosted by Windows Azure Workflow, which is installed separately from SharePoint 2013. Your SharePoint and Windows Azure Workflow environments work together to execute workflows triggered in SharePoint. The details get technical, but the important point is that workflow scalability is dramatically improved and you can be confident using SharePoint workflows at the enterprise level.
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