Creating Advanced Workflow Solutions with Visual Studio and InfoPath

The Visual Studio Workflow Designer provides a project system for developing workflow solutions. It allows you to quickly define a workflow graphically by dragging activities from the toolbox onto the design surface, and provides code-beside for business logic, a mechanism for compiling work-flows, and integrated workflow and code debugging.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Workflow Developer Starter Kit installs additional project templates and a Toolbox and Designer that developers can use to build custom Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 workflows. Windows Workflow Foundation provides the Visual Studio 2005 Designer for Windows Workflow Foundation, which is an add-in to the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 development system.

Adding Custom Activities and Conditions

Developers can add activities and conditions to the SharePoint Designer Safe List. To do this:

1.
Develop the activity or condition.
2.
Compile the activity or condition as a strong-named assembly.
3.
Deploy to the global assembly cache.
4.
Add the activity or condition to the action safe list in the web.config file.
5.
Add rules and parameters for the sentence that represents the activity or condition in the user interface to the WSS.Actions file. The WSS.Actions file is a markup specifying the appearance and performance of the activity or condition.

InfoPath provides a rich-forms development environment that integrates nicely with Visual ...

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