Writing Futuristic Workflows in Office 365 SharePoint On Prem 2013 2016 - SPTechCon Washington DC 2017

WithumSmith+Brown, PC | BE IN A POSITION OF STRENGTH
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#SPTechCon @pgbhoyar
Prashant G Bhoyar, MVP
SPTechCon Washington DC 2017 http://www.sptechcon.com/
14 November 2017
Writing Futuristic Workflows in
Office 365/ SharePoint 2013/2016 On premise

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Who AM I ?
• Born and raised in India
• Came to United States of America in 2007 for studies
• University of Maryland College Park Alumni
• Co-Author of the book “PowerShell for Office 365”
• Technical Reviewer of the book “Pro : SharePoint 2013 Administration”
• Organizer of SharePoint Saturday Baltimore (SPSBMORE)
 http://www.spsevents.org/city/baltimore/baltimoretecc
• Organizer of SharePoint Saturday DC ( SPSDC )
 http://www.spsevents.org/city/DC/summer2017
• Founder and Organizer of DC-Metro Office 365 User Group
 Monthly in person & online event
 http://www.meetup.com/DC-Metro-Office-365-User-Group/
• Recipient of Antarctic Service Medal
• Microsoft MVP ( Most Valuable Professional)
• Senior Consultant at Withum Smith and Brown PC
 https://digital.withum.com
 Former Portal Solutions
 Focus on Microsoft Solutions and Services
Prashant G Bhoyar
(PGB)

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Withum Microsoft Solutions and Services
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• Modern workplace
• Office 365 Implementations/
Migrations
• Turnkey Intranet Solution
• Managed Services
• Data Analytics
• Enterprise Mobility + Security
• Business Process Automation
• Dynamics 365
• Azure

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• 300 Level Session
• Contents are applicable for SharePoint 2013 and 2016 On
Premise as well
• Future
• Tips for writing futuristic workflows
• Throttling Limits in Office 365
• Limitations of SharePoint Workflows
• Demos
• Key Takeaways
• Q&A
Agenda

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Audience Poll
 How many of you are IT pros?
 How many of you are Developers?
 How many of you are Power Users?
 How many of you are Business Users?
 How many of you are in charge of maintaining the workflows?
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Why this session?
 Lessons Learned
 Future
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Lessons Learned
 The development/testing experience is slow
• Because of platform’s architecture
• In general Workflow development is slow process
 Analogy : Public Transportation System
 Difficult to gather all the requirements before
start of the development
• Be ready for multiple revisions
 Versioning Of SharePoint Workflows
• Updates does not get applied to running workflows
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http://usdotblog.typepad.com/secretarysblog/2010/03/public-transportation-in-the-spotlight.html#.WKHE5zvyuwU

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Recent Announcements
 There will NOT be SharePoint Designer(Breaker) 2016
• http://sharepoint-community.net/forum/topics/what-s-happening-to-sharepoint-designer-in-sharepoint-
2016-is-it
• SharePoint 2013 Designer will be supported till 2026
 Microsoft Flow
• https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/introducing-microsoft-flow-and-announcing-the-public-
preview-of-powerapps/
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What does this mean?
 SharePoint Workflows most probably will have same fate as InfoPath
forms services
• Microsoft will continue to support
• No future enhancements
 Time to explore other options
• Microsoft Flow
 https://flow.microsoft.com
• Logic Apps
 https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/logic-apps/
• Visual Studio Workflows
 Can deploy them only as “App”
• Other Third Party Products
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Tips we will cover today helps in these situations
 Fixing Bugs
 Implementing Changes in Requirements
 Migration
 Move to new workflow Products/Services
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• Browser
• Visio 2013
• SharePoint 2013 Designer
• Visual Studio
2012/2013/2015/2017
• Flow/Logic Apps
• Third Party Tools
SharePoint OnPrem
2013/2016 /SharePoint
Online Workflow Tools

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Typical SharePoint Workflow Life Cycle
Initiation
• When the workflow instance is started on list/library item
Running
• User Interaction via tasks ( optional)
• Status page reflects the status of the workflows
Termination • End of the workflow instance
Association
• When the workflow is associated with List/Library

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High Level Architecture of Workflow Infrastructure
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Top Tip 01
 Have flow chart of the workflow handy
• Microsoft Visio - Recommended
• Pen and Paper works too 
• SharePoint Designer 2013- Export to Visio

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Top Tip 01 - Cont

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Top Tip 01 - Cont
Source : http://www.daskeyboard.com/blog/?p=3855

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 Use activity “Add a comment” to write informative comments in the workflow
 End users will not see these comments unlike workflow history list logs
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Top Tip 02

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Top Tip 03 – Most Important
 Implement the logic to stop/start at a particular stage
• Helps to update the business logic gracefully
• Helpful in case the workflow instance gets terminated
• Helpful during migration
• Helps in quick testing of the changes

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Top Tip 04
 Save the Workflow status in a separate field
• Avoid default workflow name
• Helps to divide workflow into multiple workflows
• Helps if you use other products or services for workflow development in
future
• In SharePoint Online Workflow status info gets deleted after 30 days

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Top Tip 05
 If possible Break down the workflows in multiple WFs
• Helps a lot in development and maintenance
• We can start SharePoint 2010 workflows from SharePoint 2013 only
• We can not start SharePoint 2013 workflows from SharePoint 2013
workflows using OOTB Action
 You can use “Wait for field change in current item” to trigger the workflows

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Other Tips for developing maintainable custom
workflows
 Naming Convention for Custom Workflows
• Use the naming convention that works best for you and your
organization
• For example, List or Library + ListName + Purpose
 Using If condition and a custom variable, we can pick and choose
the additional logging
• Similar to #if debug directive in C#
• The workflow will be long, but it can save a lot of
troubleshooting/development time
• End users will not see additional comments in Production 

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Tips for developing maintainable custom
workflows
 Don’t create the variable if you don’t have to
• 50 is the limit
 Use SharePoint groups to assign the tasks/send emails instead of
individual users
 Do not modify the OOTB global workflows
• Create copy and then modify

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workflows
 Log information in the History List
• Log variables, important info that will be helpful during debugging/troubleshooting
• End users can see the logs 
 Use new Task List and History list for each workflow
• To create the new tasks list and history list, we can use
 Workflow Settings page
 SharePoint Designer
 SharePoint UI
• OOTB “Workflow Tasks” List has additional notifications
 To turn off -> List Settings – Advanced Settings -> Uncheck “Send e-mail when ownership is assigned?”

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workflows
 Review the workflow starting logic
• Limit how many times the workflow gets started
• Make sure they won’t start unnecessarily after the workflow is ended successfully
 Create a separate Workflow status field as text
• Gives the ability of filtering and sorting
• Gives you the ability to generate dashboards based on status field
 Approvers love this option
 Capture the dates of various approval steps
• Helps to generate audit logs/reports

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workflows
 Create custom task content types for tasks with only one logical
outcome
 Pay extra attention while modifying the Custom Task content types
• Task outcome field must be the last field
 Restrict the access
 Keep workflow initiation activity to minimum
 For large lists, don’t remove the workflow, but set to no new
instance
• Do it in non business hours

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Throttling Limits in Office 365
 In Office 365 workflow manager has strict throttling limits for SharePoint 2013 Style
workflows
 The instance has exceeded the outbound http request quota for a 1.00:00:00 time period. The 5000
request limit was reached in <time>.
• The request quota of 5000 request limits is per workflow per site collection in 24 hours
• Analogy credit score
 Workflow instances can get suspended and we need to wait 24 hours to resume the
suspended workflow instance by
• clicking Resume for the workflow or
• by using the SharePoint Workflow Client Object Model
 Suspended workflow instances will be terminated after 10 days.
Source : https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3076399

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 There is no OOTB email alert if the workflow get suspended
 We can find the suspended workflows on the page
/_layouts/15/WorkflowServiceHealth.aspx
 If we develop workflow as an “App” these throttling limitations do
not apply
• We have to use Visual Studio to develop the workflow as an App

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Throttling Limits in Office 365 – Design
Consideration
 Avoid infinite loops
• We may use “Wait for field change in current item”
 Avoid using a workflow to execute complex algorithms
• Workflows are intended to manage document-driven, human processes
and not to dispatch significant computational tasks.
 Avoid the use of the “Wait for Event in List Item" activity
Source : https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3076399

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Limitations
 We can not start workflows on delete
event
 50 variable limit
 No source control for SPD workflows
 String functions are limited
 For advance implementations you may
need to involve devs/architects
 SharePoint 2013 Style workflows
throttling

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 Sign up for Office 365 Developer
Program at http://dev.office.com/
 Get 1 year of Office 365
subscription for free
 Excellent for personal
development use
 1 Month Trial
 https://products.office.com/en-
us/business/compare-office-365-
for-business-plans
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How to get personal Office 365
Developer Tenant?

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Which one to use?
 For new workflows I recommend
• Flow ( First Option)
• SharePoint 2013 Style Workflows
• SharePoint 2010 Style Workflows
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Key Takeaways
 Hopefully the contents we covered today convince you to use
best practices while creating workflows in SharePoint 
 Sign up for Developer Program using https://dev.office.com/
 Implement the logic to start/stop workflow at any stage

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Recap

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Recap
 Future
 Tips for writing futuristic workflows
 Throttling Limits in Office 365
 Limitations of SharePoint Workflows
 Demos
 Key Takeaways
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Other SPTechCon Washington DC 2017 Sessions
 Getting Started with Microsoft Graph APIs
• Tuesday Nov 14th 2017, 4:15pm - 5:30pm
 Getting Started with the Office 365 Developer Patterns and
Practices Provisioning Engine
• Wednesday Nov 15th 2017, 8:30am - 9:45am
 Getting Started with SharePoint REST API in the Custom
SharePoint Workflows
• Wednesday Nov 15th 2017, 1:30pm - 2:45pm
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References
MSDN/TechNet:
 https://dev.office.com/sharepoint/docs/general-development/sharepoint-workflow-fundamentals
 https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj227177.aspx
 https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/
 https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/jj163181.aspx
 https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/fp142380.aspx
 https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/jj822159.aspx
 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3076399/sharepoint-2013-workflow-throttling-and-performance-in-sharepoint-
online-and-project-online
 http://www.slideshare.net/pgbhoyar/how-to-develop-maintainable-custom-workflows-in-office365-sharepoint-online-
20160628new-jersey-sharepoint-user-group-63617565
Training Videos (Paid):
 http://www.Pluralsight.com

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Q&A

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Questions? Feedback? Contact me:
 Email: pgbhoyar@gmail.com
 Twitter: @PGBhoyar
 Blog: http://pgbhoyar.com
 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pgbhoyar/
 Slides :https://www.slideshare.net/pgbhoyar
 Free Consulting/ Q&A: https://pgbhoyar.com/free-question-answer-session/
 Feedback : Please provide feedback
 Session Evals : https://eventmobi.com/sptcdc17
 Email or
 Anonymous Suggestions: https://www.suggestionox.com/r/pgb
Thank You
Organizers, Sponsors and You for Making this Possible.

Writing Futuristic Workflows in Office 365 SharePoint On Prem 2013 2016 - SPTechCon Washington DC 2017

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Writing Futuristic Workflows in Office 365 SharePoint On Prem 2013 2016 - SPTechCon Washington DC 2017