Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

SHAREPOINT AND PROJECT CONFERENCE ADRIATICS 2013

ZAGREB, NOVEMBER 27-28 2013

Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

MIKE FITZMAURICE, NINTEX

sponsors

About me

• Mike Fitzmaurice

• Vice President of Product Technology, Nintex

• 11 years at Microsoft

• SharePoint’s original technical evangelist

Introduction

• There are more than five

• These are extra top-of-mind

• Based on real-world projects

• Advice applies to any workflow product

• No demos

Don’t Always Use SharePoint Workflow

Good Uses of SharePoint Workflow

• Managing how people work

• Document approval & feedback

• Collaborative reviews & discussions

• Gathering signatures

Good Uses of SharePoint Workflow

• Automating some of SharePoint’s behavior

• Approve site creation requests

• Parse incoming email in a list and act on it

• Publishing items to target

• Moving project proposals through lifecycles

Possible Uses of SharePoint Workflow

• Manipulating other applications, data sources

• Employee onboarding

• Resource scheduling

• SharePoint lists become work queues

Bad Uses of SharePoint Workflow

• Transaction-oriented processes

• Blocking or modifying activity

• Application-to-application service activity

• Aggressive data transformations

• Work that doesn’t involve SharePoint at all

Plan to Fail

Consensus May Not Exist

• Get 3 employees and 1 manager together

• Talk about a process

• Little agreement

• Documentation disagreement, too

The Process Will Change

Exceptions are Initially Ignored

• Rarely is this considered in advance

• Rarely does everyone agree

• Ignored exceptions lead to bypass

Initial Failure as a Winning Strategy

• People do not want to hear these hard truths.

• You may have to create an initial workflow just to show

how awful a process is.

• Only then can you change it.

Process

Step

Step

Step

Start Simple

Automatethisfirst

Automatetheselater

Focus on Everyday Process

“Policy is the abdication of thought.”-Nathan Myrvold

Everyday Processes

• Steal time

• Get in the way

• Annoy users

Everyday Processes

• Have few stakeholders (even if many participants)

• Are easier to automate

• Free up time to focus on more critical stuff

“Process is the preservation and reuse of thought.”-Mike Fitzmaurice

Everyday Processes

• Automating them trains users how to think

Put Forms in Their Proper Place

The Form is the User Interface

• Not the workflow

• Not the data

If (x and y) then do this do thatEnd if

If (user is Bob) then do this and that and the other thing undo thatEnd if

If (x and y) then do this do thatEnd if

If (x and y) then do this do thatEnd if

If (user is Bob) then do this and that and the other thing undo thatEnd if

If (x and y) then do this do thatEnd if

Form-Only App Problems

• Hidden logic

• Disconnected logic

• Security

• Complexity without code

User Interface

Process Logic Data Access

Begin Step 1

Step 2Step 3

End

Think About the Whole App

Make the Workflow Do the Work

• Documented

• Auditable

• Easier to change

• Easier to manage

One Form Per Step

• Submit

• Start

• Task

Task Forms

• Workflow can route new data

• New data can be written to original form

• All info can be sent to other places

It’s Not All About Spreadsheets, Either• Same problem, different file type

• Example: HUGE Excel file with macros

• Workflow: route, track, remind

Self-Reporting Workflows

Least-Loved Techniques

• Browsing individual history entries

• Building custom reports

You’re Already Using SharePoint

• The list itself can be the report

• Users can sort, group, filter on metadata

• Write progress information to item properties

• Stage Workflows already do this

Summary

• Don’t always use SharePoint Workflow

• Plan to fail

• Focus on everyday processes

• It’s not about forms

• Self-reporting workflows

questions?

MIKEFITZMAURICE.WORDPRESS.COM

@MIKEFITZ

thank you.

SHAREPOINT AND PROJECT CONFERENCE ADRIATICS 2013

ZAGREB, NOVEMBER 27-28 2013

Make Metadata do the Work

Avoid Hard-Coding

• Task assignees

• Site URLs

• Document names

Reference What You Need

• List queries

• Database queries

• Web service calls

• Workflow context