Professional SharePoint® 2007 Web Content Management Development: Building Publishing Sites with Office SharePoint Server 2007

Chapter 12. Leveraging Workflow

Workflow has always been an important subject in the context of enterprise applications. Unfortunately, developers have historically been mostly limited to working with large and expensive workflow systems. Applications that did not rely on these third-party workflow engines required some form of workflow engine to be devised as their own implementations. These factors combined to make the workflow development story very murky for .NET developers.

Thankfully, Microsoft created the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). Not only can WF be shared across applications, but developers can also utilize it within their own custom applications. Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 is a prime example of this in that it added workflow to the SharePoint platform by leveraging WF.

This chapter begins by explaining the concepts and motivations behind WF in general. It then moves into the SharePoint WF story and how WF is incorporated within SharePoint. Finally, the steps for creating and deploying a custom workflow for use in a SharePoint Publishing site are covered. What this chapter does not contain is an in-depth discussion about WF or creating custom workflows that can be used outside of a SharePoint environment. Additional resources are provided at the end of the "Creating Custom Workflows" section for readers who want more information on WF or creating custom workflows.

The workflow development story within a SharePoint environment does not vary much between ...