Executive Summary:
Workflows are sets of actions and functionality that let you complete a defined business process in an orderly and traceable fashion. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 has several workflows available out of the box. Organizations can leverage these SharePoint workflows to create powerful business processes that will help them save money and create a more manageable, efficient, and compliant organization. |
There's a lot of buzz about Microsoft .NET 3.0 Workflow Foundation and how many savvy SharePoint users have made it a part of their arsenal in the fight against enterprise disorganization and the absence of enforceable business processes. I want to shed a little light on what workflow is, what it does, and why you might want to use it. I'll also show you how to implement the available workflows that come with your paid Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) license. You can also author workflows with just Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), but they must be built from scratch using development tools to script or compile the components. This high-level introduction is designed to make implementing some basic workflow in your organization a fairly easy task.
What Is Workflow?
Workflow is a series of actions that depict a defined process. In SharePoint terms, workflows are sets of actions and functionality logically grouped to complete a defined business process in an orderly and traceable fashion. The best way to understand this definition is through an example. Almost every organization needs to be able to accept or reject a new document or changes to an existing document. With SharePoint, you can define a simple workflow that watches a SharePoint document library for changes. It waits for any document to be checked-in, then creates a task for another user to view and accept or reject the document. Then through a simple web-based screen, the user can select either approve or reject to complete the workflow.
The above workflow scenario is simple, yet highly effective for what many managers need to accomplish on a daily basis. It ensures that documents are stored in a place that any appropriate team member can access based on security permissions. It also allows the manager to be automatically informed when changes are made to documents he or she is responsible for maintaining. The manager now has an audit trail for who made the change, when the item was changed and checked-in, and through use of versioning, exactly what changes were made. The manager also can view the data via the web and see task history and status in a single location.
Compare this simple scenario to how companies manage similar requirements without workflow. For example, a department manager might send an email message to inform users that she must approve changes to certain types of documents before they can be sent to customers. These documents are stored in shared folders on the corporate network and on local hard drives. When users change the documents in either location, they send the document via email to their manager for approval. Which version of the document did they initially change? Local or shared? Which version is the most current? What happens if someone makes an additional change while the manager is reviewing the current set of changes? Where does the manager post these changes and who does she send the email response to so that everyone is informed? How does she handle rejections or changes so they are tracked and properly noted? Can she see who is currently working on documents in her department?
All these questions can be time consuming and costly to answer and provide process for. With SharePoint's built-in capabilities and the workflows available out of the box with MOSS, organizations can quickly address most of these questions and concerns.
Available Workflows
The MOSS workflows described below represent the extent of what is pre-built and available out of the box. I'll discuss each in detail to explain how they can start helping your organization immediately. Implementing these workflows doesn't have to be complicated or difficult. Many aspects of SharePoint document libraries, along with the following workflows, can solve almost all of the issues and questions regarding manual processes I listed previously.
Collect Feedback. The Collect Feedback workflow is one of the first workflows many users will implement given its ease of creation, combined with the power and usefulness of the functionality. This workflow enables SharePoint end users to quickly create a series of tasks attached to a document that will automatically email other users with a request to open the document and respond to their task with feedback. With a few mouse clicks, users can create a custom workflow for a specific document or build and save reusable workflows for common documents or business processes. By consolidating this effort in SharePoint, the application keeps track of each of the feedback tasks, who the task was assigned to, the due date, current status, and the outcome of the specific task. Users can also review the workflow report history to see the series of events consisting of the initial creation of the workflow, each task creation, who initiated the workflow, and a description of each event and potential outcome. This process provides an easy-to-follow event timeline around the workflow. Figure 1 shows a sample workflow history page.
In the workflow history and the workflow task list, the feedback and comments are displayed on the main report page. The page contains a significant amount of information about the status and history of a specific workflow instance on a document. This data is captured, backed up, and maintained in a logical location relative to the document and document library.
Collect Signatures. Microsoft supports certified digital identifications that you can use to insert your signature and provide digital validation. The Collect Signatures workflow allows information workers to use some of the integrated features of Microsoft Office 2007. This workflow lets users create a Signature Line component in Office Excel 2007 or Office Word 2007 documents that can be digitally signed by required recipients.
The intention here is to allow document validation to move through a business process without requiring a succession of users to print and physically sign a document. Anyone who has gone through this process knows how tedious it can be. You receive a document that you must print to sign. That copy isn't represented digitally, and can't be stored in that manner from this point forward because of the physical signature requirements. The document is now faxed or sent via traditional mailing services to each party for individual signatures. Often by the end of such workflows, the whole process has taken weeks and the documents have been signed, initialed, and faxed so many times that the final document is almost unreadable.
The Collect Signature workflow replaces this process via SharePoint’s document management capabilities, allowing documents to move through a process of signature task assignments. The workflow is simple: After creating a document that requires signatures, the initiator creates digital signature lines for each signer inside the document using built-in components of Office Word 2007 or other Excel 2007files. Once the document is added to a document library containing the Collect Signatures workflow, the user begins the workflow inside the actual document by initiating the workflow process using Office 2007’s native connectivity with SharePoint environments. The workflow assigns tasks to the users added to the workflow and that have signature lines in the document. Users are assigned signature tasks, which require the users to open and digitally sign the document, thus completing their task. The workflow then assigns the signature task to the next signatory in the workflow. Upon final completion of the tasks, you have a document that has a list of digital signatures and version history for the changes.
Disposition Approval. The Disposition Approval workflow shows some of the other abilities and areas where automation and notification can help manage common business process problems. This workflow is designed for retention management tasks and works a little differently than the previously mentioned workflows. It automatically initiates review tasks for documents that have reached the end of a retention lifecycle.
In most organizations, any given document contains a logical or contextual lifecycle. It costs significant resources to maintain documents that are no longer needed for historical or compliance purposes, yet it can cost even more to search existing documents in an effort to find those that should be retained versus destroyed. There have been many cases in which corporations and individuals have found themselves in legal trouble when old documents were located and used as evidence in court. In many of those cases, the documents had reached the end of their lifecycle and were no longer required by law to be maintained. In essence, they were simply liabilities--both legally and financially.