Archive for December, 2008

Use sequential or State machine workflow in SharePoint?

December 9, 2008

Sequential workflow advantages:

1. easier to implement

State machine workflow advantages

1. You can also use sequential parts in the state machine workflow

2. You can step back to previous state in the workflow (you can return to previous state much more easily than in the sequential workflow)

Rule of thumb: If you create a workflow where you think it will be necessary (now or in the future) to return in the workflow into a previous state use state machine workflow

Pretty easy yeah?… I would not have written it If I had not burned myself.

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WSS 3.0 Workflow Task and Outlook 2007 error

December 9, 2008

Scenario:

1. Create a simple workflow using Visual Studio 2008 and deploy it to WSS 3.0. 

2.  In this workflow you create a Task and let Sharepoint send an email notification to the user

3. When user receives  the email the email looks like this:

outlook3

4. When you click the Edit buton in the left top corner an error message appears that the image cannot be edited because the site is not accessible or the task has been removed. But this is not true.

The error is caused by WSS 3.0.  WSS 3.0 does not contain service named workflow.asmx and Outlook is trying to call this service.

The easy way to solve this problem is to upgrade to MOSS 2007 which contains workflow.asmx service or the only other way that comes to my mind is to implement your own workflow.asmx, but I don’t know if this approach is viable.