Chapter 12. A bag of workflow developer tricks

Everything in the first 11 chapters of this book was fundamental to a SharePoint workflow developer. We discussed out-of-the-box SharePoint workflows, other nondeveloper techniques with SharePoint Designer and Office Visio, workflows with Visual Studio, and custom forms. With chapter 12, you round out the SharePoint developers skills with a few key techniques.

These techniques include how to debug and handle faults in your workflows, version workflows, set up event receivers, send and receive external events, and work with the SharePoint workflow object model. Debugging and exception handling are an obvious must, but versioning is not well understood. If you don’t properly version your workflows, idle workflow instances might break when they resume execution.

Why study event receivers in a workflow book? Event receivers can save you time if they fit the business requirements. Event receivers are typically easier and faster to create for smaller, one-time processing than their workflow counterparts and a few new events for workflows.

12.1. Fault handling and debugging workflows

12.2. Versioning workflows

12.3. Building workflow event receivers

12.4. Pluggable workflow services

12.5. SharePoint workflow object model

12.6. Summary