Tips and Tricks for Building Visual Studio Workflows
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Malin De Silva presented on tips and tricks for building Visual Studio workflows. The presentation covered differences between SharePoint 2010 and 2013 workflows, differences between designer and Visual Studio workflows, how to develop and debug workflows in Visual Studio, demonstrations of creating workflows and variables, accessing REST APIs, and working with workflow tasks. Best practices discussed included logging, scoping variables, handling failures, and avoiding too many requests errors.
Tips and Tricks for Building Visual Studio Workflows
- 1. malindesilva@live.com Tips and Tricks for Building Visual Studio Workflows Malin De Silva SharePoint Specialist Exilesoft, Sri Lanka Business 365 Saturday - Singapore 24th October 2015
- 2. About Me Planning, Development and administering experience since SharePoint 2007. Speaker at many forums and conferences. Blogger, StackExchange contributor and a big Azure fan.
- 3. Agenda • Introduction to Workflows • Creating Visual Studio Workflows • Using REST API References • Working with Tasks • Challenges and Best Practices malindesilva@live.com
- 4. Who are we? • Developers? • Have built Workflows? (Designer or Visual Studio) • Have built Visual Studio Workflows in 2013? malindesilva@live.com
- 5. 2010 vs 2013 Workflows SharePoint 2010 SharePoint 2013 Coupled to SharePoint servers Decoupled (Other consuming platforms) Declarative or Custom Code Declarative SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint Server SharePoint Server Content Types No No Apps App Friendly .Net framework used by SharePoint (.Net 3.51) .Net Framework xxx Workflow runs inside SharePoint Workflows run outside SharePoint malindesilva@live.com
- 6. Designer 2013 vs Visual Studio SharePoint Designer 2013 Visual Studio Power Users, SharePoint Developers SharePoint Developers Can use Visio Can’t Cannot debug Can debug, including SharePoint Online No ALM support Full ALM support Cannot be a part of apps Can be a part of apps malindesilva@live.com
- 7. Workflow Development and Debugging Prerequisites • SharePoint Farm • Workflow Manager Farm connected • Visual Studio 2012 or later • Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2013 malindesilva@live.com DEVELOPMENT On-premises • Allow Workflow Manager Tools to access through firewall SharePoint Online • May require installing a proxy client • Create Azure Service Bus namespace DEBUGGING
- 8. Demonstration Creating Visual Studio Workflows and Defining Variables
- 9. REST API References • Any technology supports standard REST capabilities • Mapping with client object model • Client object model method: List.GetByTitle(listname) • REST endpoint: http://server/site/_api/lists/getbytitle('listname') malindesilva@live.com Operation HTTP Method (s) Read a resource GET Create a resource POST Update a resource PUT, MERGE Delete a resource DELETE
- 10. REST API Examples Operation HTTP Type Example Read lists in a web GET http://malin.sharepoint.com /_api/lists Creates a list POST http://malin.sharepoint.com /_api/lists { '_metadata':{'type':SP.List}, 'AllowContentTypes': true, 'BaseTemplate': 104, 'ContentTypesEnabled': true, 'Description': 'My list description', 'Title': 'RestTest' } malindesilva@live.com
- 11. Demonstration Accessing current item and using REST API references
- 12. Working with Workflow Tasks • Content type changes • Task Workflow Task (SharePoint 2013) • Workflow Task content type has two new columns • WorkfowInstanceId • TaskOutcome • Two types of tasks • Single task • Composite task • Custom task forms malindesilva@live.com
- 13. Demonstration Working with Workflow Tasks
- 14. Custom Declarative Activities • Richer market needs • Repeatable design needs • Develop and deploy to business market • Use activities and actions • .actions4 files malindesilva@live.com
- 15. Workflow Best Practices • Log as much as you can • Scope workflow variables • Ensure User when assigning tasks • Design with failures in mind malindesilva@live.com
- 16. Challenges We Faced • Long running workflows • HTTP 429 too many requests malindesilva@live.com
- 18. Thank You! Malin De Silva SharePoint Specialist Exilesoft mds@Exilesoft.com/ malindesilva@live.com @MalinD19