Workflow Team

New Workflow Manager 1.0 Getting Started Tutorial

Steve Danielson — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:32:46 GMT

A new Getting Started Tutorial for Workflow Manager 1.0 has been posted here:

Workflow Manager 1.0 Getting Started Tutorial

This is a 3 step tutorial which covers creating a custom activity, using it in a workflow, and publishing and invoking the workflow. It covers the use of the HttpSend activity, several of the DynamicValue activities, and also includes troubleshooting steps for common issues related to authoring, publishing, and invoking workflows.

There is also a video walkthrough and a download of the completed tutorial here:

Workflow Manager 1.0 Getting Started Tutorial Download and Video Walkthrough

This download also includes the starter files for the tutorial.

I have also started a thread for discussing the tutorial on the Workflow Manager 1.0 MSDN Community Forum. Please feel free to make comments or suggestions to the thread, but if you have any questions, please start a new thread for the question.

Thanks,

Steve Danielson [Microsoft]

Cumulative Update 1 Released for Workflow Manager 1.0

Jurgen Willis — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 04:23:00 GMT

I am pleased to announce the release of the first Cumulative Update (CU) for Workflow Manager 1.0; you can find the associated KB article here. The Workflow Manager CU has a dependency on Service Bus CU1 (KB is here), which was also just released.

There are a couple of options for the installation:

Direct installation from the Microsoft Download Center; the appropriate links are in the KB articles above
Via the Web Platform Installer:

Web PI link for Workflow Manager CU1
Web PI link for Service Bus CU1

This CU aggregates a number of fixes, as discussed in the KB. It also adds support for suspending and resuming workflow instances.

Suspending & Resuming Workflow Instances

Workflows can be suspended via 3 mechanisms:

Using the WorkflowManagementClient:

public WorkflowInstanceResult Suspend(string workflowName, string instanceName, string reason)

Via the Suspend activity, which you can use in your workflow definitions
Via an unhandled error: most unhandled errors - which would have previously terminated the instance - will now suspend the instance

Instances can be resumed via the WorkflowManagementClient:

public WorkflowInstanceResult Resume(string workflowName, string instanceName)

New Book on WF 4.5

Jurgen Willis — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 13:53:00 GMT

Congratulations to Bayer White on his recently published book, Pro WF 4.5 !

Windows Workflow Foundation Case Studies

Jurgen Willis — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 00:10:08 GMT

Happy New Year!

I’ve gotten a few requests for WF customer examples, so I thought I'd kick off 2013 with a list of some published case studies. These are case studies specific to the use of WF directly; there are numerous additional case studies for other Microsoft products that build on top of WF, e.g. SharePoint, CRM, Axapta, TFS, PowerShell, System Center, etc.

If you have any questions or would like to work with us to publish a case study with your company, please let me know. You can send me mail at JWillis, here at Microsoft. (or you can click on “Email Blog Author” in the Options section of this page)

Hope you find these helpful, and many thanks to the customers who worked with us on these case studies!

Customer	Link
PayGlobal	Developers Gain Productivity Using Windows Workflow Foundation for Complex Workflows
PAR Springer-Miller	ISVs Cloud Solution Helps Cut Costs, Transform Business in the Global Hospitality Industry
Icertis	Technology Firm Transforms Business with Scalable Cloud Solution
Xerox Corporation	Transportation Solution Provider Screens Commercial Vehicles with Cloud Service
Softeng	Major IT Provider Deploys Web Solution in the Cloud, Avoids Thousands in Costs
RedPrairie	BPM Solution Provider Significantly Increases Developer Productivity with New Tools
Aderant	Solution Provider Upgrades Development Tools to Improve Customization, Productivity
Dataract	Solution Provider Streamlines Processes, Will Speed Some Development by 50 Percent
SYSPRO	Global Software Company Cuts Development Time for Workflow Solution by 80 Percent
Darwin Dimensions	Avatar Developer Speeds Time-to-Market By Choosing Windows, .NET, Over Linux
Department of Environment and Climate Change	Department of Environment and Climate Change introduces a new software platform for the delivery of Property Vegetation Plans
BT (formerly British Telecom)	Telecommunications Firm Reduces Overheads by 90 Per Cent with Automated Solution
Unilin	UNILIN integrates business unit processes from around the world
Gold Systems	Voice-Based Password-Reset Solution Boosts Security, Saves Time and Money
Farm Credit Services	Farm Credit Company Boosts Loan Processes, Speeds Development with Workflow Solution
MSIT	Microsoft Increases Developer Productivity by 40 Percent with Workflow Modeling Tools
Vanderbilt University Medical Center	Medical Center Develops Patient Screening Tool Using Enhanced Web Technologies
New Zealand – Dept of Corrections	Corrections Department Upgrades System to Meet Changing Business Needs
Thomson Financial	Cutting-Edge Financial Software Puts Asset Managers in Control
Polizia Ferroviaria	Italian Railway Police Automates its Document Management and Workflow

Updated Workflow Developer Center

Jurgen Willis — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 06:15:00 GMT

We've updated our Workflow Developer Center on MSDN. We've simplified the design and refreshed the site with updated links. As part of this work, we've also pulled together a list of key WF samples.

Our goal is for this to be a go-to site that aggregates key Workflow resources, including documentation, samples, videos, and other important links.

Let us know what other content you think is important and what else you'd like to see on the site.

Workflow Session at //build/

Jurgen Willis — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 22:37:54 GMT

We delivered a Workflow session at the //build/ conference yesterday. Slides and a recording of the presentation are now available; it was a great opportunity to provide an update on all of our recent investments. It was a packed session with lots of good questions and discussions afterward. Thank you to everyone who was able to attend //build/ in person - the team is really enjoying all of the great conversations!

New Case Study from PayGlobal

Jurgen Willis — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 16:31:00 GMT

We have a new case study from one of our good partners, PayGlobal. The case study does a great job describing how WF contributes to their Exolvo solution. It also highlights the developer productivity gains that PayGlobal's consultants and customers are seeing from the Workflow designer enhancements we made in .NET 4.5 and Visual Studio 2012. From the article:

“Adopting Windows Workflow Foundation 4.5 for our Exolvo product development has made it much easier to build and maintain the complex workflows required for HR processes”

Be sure to check it out!

AppFabric Now Supported on Windows Server 2012

Jurgen Willis — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 17:32:00 GMT

We have completed our validation work and are pleased to announce that Microsoft AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server now supports the following platforms:

.NET 4.5
Windows Server 2012
Windows 8 x64 (for development purposes)
Windows PowerShell 3.0
SQL Server 2012

No changes were required in AppFabric to run on these platforms, so no updates are required.

Announcing the Release of Workflow Manager 1.0

Jurgen Willis — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 22:33:00 GMT

Today we announced the RTM release of Workflow Manager 1.0, a new offering that builds on and extends the capabilities of WF 4.5. It's been an incredibly busy time for the team, and we're thrilled to get this release out to our customers, hot on the heels of our WF enhancements in .NET 4.5. As previously mentioned, this first release of Workflow Manager has had a strong focus on supporting the upcoming releases of SharePoint Server 2013 and Office 365.

Thank you to all of you who helped us validate and improve Workflow Manager 1.0. We look forward to your continued feedback!

AppFabric Server

Jurgen Willis — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 15:45:00 GMT

I’ve gotten a few questions about AppFabric for Windows Server, so I’d like to share some thoughts on the topic, specifically on the Workflow management aspects of AppFabric Server.

First, it’s important to clarify what AppFabric Server is/isn’t, since I’ve seen some confusion on this. Simply put, AppFabric provides a set of extensions for IIS-hosted workflows. With .NET 4, we added support for “WCF Workflows Services”, workflows that you can call as WCF SOAP services and that can consume other SOAP services. These workflows run in WorkflowServiceHost (WFSH) instances. As with other WCF ServiceHosts, WFSH can be self-hosted in a process of your choosing, e.g. a Windows Service, an Azure Worker role, etc. We also provided integration which makes it easy to host WFSH instances in IIS, including use of the WAS (Windows Process Activation Service) for message-based activation of workflows. All of these capabilities were part of the framework in .NET 4.

AppFabric Server builds on WF and provides extensions to IIS to deliver additional capabilities for the management of WCF Workflow Services. The most important pieces are:

A tracking event aggregator. The WF runtime writes tracking records to ETW channels; AppFabric Server reads those records and pushes them into a SQL Server tracking DB
A IIS Management Console plugin which provides tooling support for configuring workflows and viewing the workflow tracking information (from the above DB)
Integration with the IIS auto-start feature to automatically start WFSH instances

In this release, we have continued to invest significantly in the WCF Workflow Service scenarios that WFSH and AppFabric Server target. These investments have largely been in the core framework in .NET 4.5, where they are most leveraged. They include support for contract-first authoring of WCF Workflow Services and support in WFSH for versioning (via WorkflowIdentity integration), Dynamic Update and C# expressions. And of course, our other core investments such as the authoring improvements, state machine and performance enhancements accrue to all of our hosting options, including WorkflowApplication and WFSH.

Given the big investments we’ve been making across the workflow stack, we have not been able to invest in surfacing all of the new 4.5 functionality in the AppFabric tooling. However, we are doing the work to ensure that AppFabric works well on .NET 4.5 and Windows Server 2012.