Chapter 3. Custom Designer workflows
This chapter covers
- Comparing different types of SharePoint Designer workflows
- Building blocks of SharePoint Designer workflows
- Implementing and testing your first SharePoint Designer workflow
SharePoint Designer (SPD) is a powerful tool you can use to help extend the out-of-the-box features in SharePoint. You may want to use SPD for unique business needs such as implementing a custom look and feel with your company’s logos, colors, and fonts on your SharePoint sites. Branding is a common use for SPD and it performs many other functions such as building custom web parts, modifying page layouts and, you guessed it, building custom workflows.
SPD has a strong capacity to build custom workflows that can meet complex business needs and processes. SPD leverages the workflow architecture that SharePoint is built on by generating XOML, the declarative workflow markup language we briefly mentioned in chapter 1. SPD publishes this XOML into SharePoint, which is then interpreted by the Windows Workflow Foundation architecture, and your business processes start coming to life! SharePoint Designer workflows are often called declarative workflows, whereas Visual Studio workflows are called compiled workflows.
SPD’s greatest benefit is that nontechnical people can design workflows that are then translated into what the platform needs in order to run them. Ease of use and speed are two of the excellent benefits of SPD workflows.