Workflow projects present special challenges. They involve many parts of solution architecture (user interfaces, process designs, data) and even more parts of organizations (users, managers, auditors, IT). This session covers five commonly-observed problems the speaker sees with great frequency, and offers advice as to how to address them; the focus is more about designing overall solutions and managing success than it is about coding and tool usage. Mike Fitzmaurice

1. Five Best Practices for
Approaching Workflow Solutions
MIKE FITZMAURICE, NINTEX
SHAREPOINT AND PROJECT CONFERENCE ADRIATICS 2013
ZAGREB, NOVEMBER 27-28 2013

2. sponsors

3. About me
• Mike Fitzmaurice
• Vice President of Product Technology, Nintex
• 11 years at Microsoft
• SharePoint’s original technical evangelist

4. 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

6. Don’t Always Use
SharePoint Workflow

7. Good Uses of SharePoint Workflow
• Managing how people work
• Document approval & feedback
• Collaborative reviews & discussions
• Gathering signatures

8. 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

9. Possible Uses of SharePoint Workflow
• Manipulating other applications, data sources
• Employee onboarding
• Resource scheduling
• SharePoint lists become work queues

10. 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

12. Plan to Fail

13. Consensus May Not Exist
• Get 3 employees and 1 manager together
• Talk about a process
• Little agreement
• Documentation disagreement, too

14. The Process Will Change

15. Exceptions are Initially Ignored
• Rarely is this considered in advance
• Rarely does everyone agree
• Ignored exceptions lead to bypass

16. 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.

17. Start Simple
Step
Automate
this
first
Automate
these
later
Process
Step
Step

19. Focus on Everyday Process

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

21. Everyday Processes
• Steal time
• Get in the way
• Annoy users

22. Everyday Processes
• Have few stakeholders (even if many participants)
• Are easier to automate
• Free up time to focus on more critical stuff

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

24. Everyday Processes
• Automating them trains users how to think

26. Put Forms in Their Proper Place

27. The Form is the User Interface
• Not the workflow
• Not the data

28. If (x and y) then
do this
do that
End if
If (user is Bob) then
do this and that and the other thing
undo that
End if
If (x and y) then
do this
do that
End if
If (x and y) then
do this
do that
End if
If (user is Bob) then
do this and that and the other thing
undo that
End if
If (x and y) then
do this
do that
End if

29. Form-Only App Problems
• Hidden logic
• Disconnected logic
• Security
• Complexity without code

30. Think About the Whole App
User Interface
Process Logic
Data Access

31. Make the Workflow Do the Work
• Documented
• Auditable
• Easier to change
• Easier to manage

33. One Form Per Step
• Submit
• Start
• Task

35. Task Forms
• Workflow can route new data
• New data can be written to original form
• All info can be sent to other places

36. It’s Not All About Spreadsheets, Either
• Same problem, different file type
• Example: HUGE Excel file with macros
• Workflow: route, track, remind

38. Self-Reporting Workflows

39. Least-Loved Techniques
• Browsing individual history entries
• Building custom reports

40. 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

42. Summary
• Don’t always use SharePoint Workflow
• Plan to fail
• Focus on everyday processes
• It’s not about forms
• Self-reporting workflows

43. questions?
MIKEFITZMAURICE.WORDPRESS.CO
M
@MIKEFITZ

44. thank you.
SHAREPOINT AND PROJECT CONFERENCE ADRIATICS 2013
ZAGREB, NOVEMBER 27-28 2013

46. Make Metadata do the Work

47. Avoid Hard-Coding
• Task assignees
• Site URLs
• Document names

48. Reference What You Need
• List queries
• Database queries
• Web service calls
• Workflow context