SharePoint Designer 2013 vs Workbox. Prepared by JMS

Transcription

1 SharePoint Designer 2013 vs Workbox Prepared by JMS

2 Contents Overview... 3 SharePoint Designer Introduction... 4 Behind the Scenes... 5 Datapolis Workbox Introduction... 7 Behind the Scenes... 8 Conclusion... 9

3 Overview Workflows are an important aspect when working with documents and list items within SharePoint. Typically these workflows manage a lifecycle of an item but could also be used for a much more power aspects of SharePoint such as creating site collections. The goal of this report is to look at the development process using two different approaches and design tools. We will compare costs and ease of development and determine the best direction for our company. Our focus for this exercise will be to develop an After Market Quote Entry workflow using a state machine workflow development path. There will be several activities we need to manage during the lifecycle of the quote once it s entered into the system. Using both SharePoint Designer 2013 and Datapolis Workbox 2013, we will compare the two and make a determination of which we should implement into our SharePoint environment. Some of the aspects we ll concentrate on are as follows: Ease of development Ease of deployment Training Robustness Cost For this competition, we have set up a list named After Market Quotes which includes the necessary fields and form for entering in a new quote. We also determined that this would be a four state workflow allowing the approvers to move it along when each was finished with their task. The workflow starts when the coordinator enters the information into the After Markets Quote list. During the process of entering it, they assign it to the first person who will be the manager or the designee. After the item is created, an will be sent notifying them of the task assigned to them.

4 The manager will receive an notifying them of the task. In this we will define certain information that is important for the Manager/Designee to complete their task. Once complete, they will re-assign it to the coordinator. The coordinator will now receive an notifying them of the task being completed by the manager/designee. Once they receive it, they can complete their task and re-assign it to applications. When applications receive the task, we want to start a timer. The timer will be based off of the amount of time the task remains unfinished and will be as follows. First Reminder on One day past due to Applications Second Reminder on Two days past due to Applications Third Reminder on Three Days past due to Manager and Applications Weekly reminders sent to both Manager and Applications after this point. After applications complete the task, it will re-assign the task to the coordinator. The coordinator will receive an informing them that it has been completed. The coordinator will then mark the item as complete and finish the workflow. The final aspect of this solution will be that the quote will remain in a follow-up state which will send out automatic reminder, based on the date, at different intervals. Two weeks Monthly Quarterly SharePoint Designer 2013 Microsoft provides a few tools that can be used for developing workflows within a SharePoint site. This side-by-side comparison will focus on SharePoint Designer 2013 and will use some of the built in functionality of this solution. Introduction This is taken from the Microsoft website. Visio 2013 and SharePoint Designer 2013 make it easy for business analysts, process consultants, and IT professionals to collaborate and build workflows. Both Visio Professional 2013 and the Visual Designer in SharePoint Designer 2013 provide a rich representation of workflows in a format that is understandable to programmers and non-programmers alike. By using Visio 2013, you can visually create a SharePoint workflow, export the workflow to SharePoint Designer 2013, and then publish that workflow to a SharePoint site. After a workflow has been created in Visio 2013, it must be exported to SharePoint Designer Then, a SharePoint site owner or IT professional adds parameters to the workflow by using either the workflow text editor or the new Visual Workflow Designer, which is a Visio 2013 ActiveX control

5 that is hosted in SharePoint Designer After the workflow has been completed, it can be published to the SharePoint site. This is ideal for business analysts and process consultants who are already familiar with flowcharts in Visio, because it allows them to design a workflow that represents business logic. The person who designs the workflow can focus solely on the business intelligence (BI) needs of the workflow without needing to be an expert in declarative workflows. Behind the Scenes One of the key concepts synonymous with workflow development is the State Machine workflows. Microsoft SharePoint Designer uses stages that represent the state a document or list item is in. These stages can contain logical building blocks such as loops and steps as well as comparative logic. Stages Example:

6

7 In the example above, you can see several of those capabilities in use. You can easily develop state based workflows that can accomplish certain tasks. You can also extract information that is associated to the SharePoint architecture which makes it really nice for look-ups and variable definitions. Where SharePoint Designer 2013 lags is clear support for displaying forms that are used between the states. In most of the workflows that we use in the Organice system, it requires user input between each state. It s been difficult to find any real solution for the SharePoint Designer approach. There are however forms usage for Visual Studio but for the basis of this report, I decided that that would not be an option due to the in-depth coding and permission level when developing workflows in that environment. The flow of the SharePoint Designer developed workflows also seems a bit disconnected. You can utilize Visio 2013 to help in this area but it takes you away from the development and tends to muddy it a bit. I also experienced a lot of issues with flipping back and forth between text editor mode and visual editor mode and Visio and SharePoint Designer would crash frequently. This made it a little frustrating when trying to get a visual representation of the workflow. All in all, you can develop workflows using SharePoint Designer Creating Staged workflows can be accomplished and deployed to work with documents and list based items. Datapolis Workbox 2013 Datapolis Workbox is a visual SharePoint workflow designer that offers a robust set of tools which makes workflow development and deployment very simple. Introduction Taken from the Datapolis Website: Datapolis Workbox is a no-code workflow solution for SharePoint 2013, meeting Business Process Management (BPM) objectives across the board. Useful for anyone who wants rapid, accurate processing of documents and data stored in SharePoint. Datapolis Workbox combines a visual process designer for business users, and a visual activities designer for technical users with a forms builder; all fully integrated with each other and with SharePoint. This dual nature, simple for business users and powerful for technical users, distinguishes the solution among others. No programming skills are required, although sophisticated programming functions are possible. Business managers use Datapolis Workbox to build and deploy simple workflows, or to model more complex tasks for automation by IT developers. Technology development firms utilize it to quickly model, test and deploy sophisticated stand-alone workflow solutions for their clients.

8 Datapolis Workbox can be used as well to bridge communication gaps between business and technical workers. Datapolis Workbox automates batch processes such as mass mailings, document management tasks, forms processing, line of business data integration and much more. Anytime someone fills out a form, submits a request, shares a document or manipulates data, Datapolis Workbox can help track, control and speed up the process. Why Datapolis Workbox: Drag-and-drop easy designer for business users to model a process Underlying powerful tools for IT professionals to automate activities Process analysis and decision support Secure definition of permissions Forms design flexibility Workflow history database Full integration with SharePoint Behind the Scenes Datapolis Workbox offers a complex and rich set of tools that allow business users, IT personnel and anyone within the company the ability to rapidly create and deploy robust workflows in a fraction of the time of normal workflow development applications. It s based on the State Machine workflow and gives the end user a drag-and-drop in a visual web based designer. Similar to other workflow tools, it allows actions between each state. Within these actions, you can specify different functional activities which will take a document through its life cycle.

9 It also allows storing variables and using them from comparative activities and triggers within the workflow life cycle. Permissions can also be managed not only for the document but for an action. Using filters and lookups, you can set who has access at what time during the workflow life cycle. This can also be managed using permission groups within the Workbox design tool. Forms are also part of the interface. Between each action, the designer can use a Workbox form or any customized InfoPath forms. These forms can perform look-ups to other SharePoint lists for additional information that is sometimes needed in the lifecycle of a document. There is a cost associated with this tool which is its one drawback. We may be able to lump this into our 2013 migration with Organice which would save the expense. Conclusion Both solutions are similar in that they have the ability to create and deploy different levels of workflows within SharePoint. They offer little nuances in terms they use, Workbox uses States and SharePoint Designer uses Stages. Each can be triggered to perform actions based on column values and or user

10 interaction. There was also a learning curve for me when performing this comparative between the two development tools. After nine days, I ve come away with a little better knowledge of SharePoint workflow development in both Visual Studio and SharePoint Designer/Visio. Visual Studio is a tool for true developers that can write machine language driven applications. It requires a significant amount of knowledge and experience. It also requires permissions to SharePoint that we should never give the common business user. SharePoint Designer required a far less learning curve and permission set compared to Visual Studio. We decided during our testing to abandon Visual Studio and went with SharePoint Designer and Visio. Based on the past nine days, and looking at as many aspects as the short time allowed, I would give the nod to Datapolis Workbox. In my opinion, I was able to rapidly deploy fully functional, robust workflows that solved a business need. Some of that is due to my experience with using the tool but after jumping in, head first, the comparison between SD 2013 (SharePoint Designer 2013), it became more than just familiarity or lack thereof. SharePoint Designer really falls short in ease of use and having the robustness that Workbox delivers. The only saving grace is that SharePoint designer is free and Workbox has a cost associated to it. But the speeds at which you can deploy a workflow in Workbox will make-up for the cost over time, within a short time in my personal opinion. The user interface offers a comfortable transition into designing visual workflows. The actions between the states and the activities within the actions are a natural concept that can be easily taught and grasped by the average business user. Being able to store procedures that occur throughout the workflow allows you to eliminate having to re-create a process in every action between states. Also being able to query any SQL database or LDAP and even PowerShell scripting that opens the door to endless possibilities. All but the latter can be done without performing any coding at all. Forms are easily created and have the ability to be re-used throughout the workflow as well as using custom InfoPath forms. Some of these capabilities were available in SD 2013 but were cumbersome to grasp and find information on how to implement without going to Visual Studio and coding. These were all factors when coming to this conclusion. There are other tools available on the market. We ve chosen these two to base our analysis on and doing a side by side comparison.