SharePoint Designer (SPD) Workflow deployment

One day I have very tough requirement, my requirement was to deploy my SharePoint designer workflow from development server to TEST server, I tried to find solutions from the internet but didn’t get any easy way for my requirements, at the last I have found one very good link which fulfill my requirements, though it requires some manual steps as describes in below link.

But now I can replicate same designer workflow to target server with some or more manual changes, I know that it’s very painful at some level to do manual steps, but we can say that it’s possible to deploy SPD workflow to other machine with manual effort ….

There is no direct way to copy designer workflow from one server to another server. Only thing which we can do is through “site template” also.

We need to save our SharePoint site as template in which we have created the workflow from SharePoint designer and using that template we can create a new site on another server which will have same workflow attached with it.

Here is link which describes manual steps to deploy designer workflow.

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/andynoon/archive/2007/09/18/reparenting-a-workflow-to-a-different-list.aspx

Enjoy working!!

Limitation of SharePoint Designer(SPD) Workflow

SharePoint Designer is good tool to start initial or basic level workflow, I am not expert and good person to point out any limitation into any software, but as per me below are some of the limitation which I felt for SharePoint Designer Workflow, I’ll also write you more description about some of the limitation in coming posts …

1. We don’t have facility to send BCC email to any person from “Send an Email” actions.


2. We can’t bind and attach more then one list into designer workflow, though there are some manual steps from where we can fulfill our requirements, but there won’t be any easy steps from interface or GUI


3. We can’t deploy/copy our designer workflow from one server to another server like there won’t be any easy way to deploy SPD workflow from development machine to TEST and Production Server; I’ll write how to do manual steps to achieve this functionality. here is my post regarding how to deploy designer workflow ...


4. Designer Workflow don’t give us full customized editor from where we can customized our email body text, to do this, we need to write static HTML tags into email body part.


5. We don’t write any calculation fields or formulas into Designer Workflow actions items, like I can’t extract only date from date-time column into designer workflow interface, for this I need to take one extra column into my SharePoint list and need to manipulate into designer workflow.


6. While working in “Send an Email” action, if we add any list column from adding “Add Lookup to Body” button and if that column don’t have any values into SharePoint list, then it’s shows as ?????? instead of blank values into email body while sending emails …

I’ll update above lists as per my experience with designer workflow.

SharePoint Designer (SPD) Workflow

I am sharing some of my good repository links regarding working with SharePoint Designer Workflow.

 Good link to start with SPD Workflow – how to send email with list columns

http://rshelton.com/archive/2007/10/05/sharepoint-document-workflow-quothow-toquot---sending-an-email-with.aspx

 How to change task list for auto generated tasks for SPD Workflow

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/tbone/archive/2008/01/10/ode-to-joy-changing-the-task-list-for-auto-generated-tasks-within-sharepoint-designer.aspx

http://nickgrattan.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/changing-the-task-list-for-sharepoint-designer-workflows/

 Applying SPD Workflow to multiple lists

http://nickgrattan.wordpress.com/2007/10/17/applying-a-sharepoint-designer-workflow-to-multiple-lists/

 Best link which will describe how to “collect data from user” action activity

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/HA102098081033.aspx

 Good information for how to send email with customize email message, hyperlink into with SPD Workflow

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/HA102390421033.aspx