Windows Workflow Foundation
Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) is an important new framework, part of WinFX. I'm not an expert on this yet -- specifically I haven't done the homework around the eventing model and external host services -- but I know enough to be dangerous.
I think WF has the potential to radically simplify center-based Groove integration projects.
In most of the large-scale integration projects I've worked with, there's a big "workspace lifecycle" component, which goes something like this: one or more existing systems (ERP, CRM, HR...) are tracking important things; an event happens inside of those applications, but the human process to handle that event (order delivery, issue resolution, review/approval...) is largely left to users' own ad-hoc processes. Where you need several people to perform that work, especially if those users are far-flung, then a Groove workspace should be created for the activity. The value proposition for center-integrated Groove systems is to create workspaces automatically in response to these central events, populate the workspaces with relevant business data (records, documents, reference material); deliver the workspace automatically to the right people; push updates from the center into the workspace when anything important changes; push updates from the workspace into the center, to track status and report on activity; and finally wrap up the workspace and shut it down when this activity is finished.
Now, most cases, this process is implemented in a fairly monolithic "controller" application. Unfortunately, the process will often change (for example, at one large customer, the list of invitees to each workspace was originally just the "account manager", but then changed according to the type of activity). Supporting this process variation or evolution should actually be one of the primary requirements of an integration project, because it's bound to happen. With a monolithic controller block, the design-validate-maintain-deploy cycle is difficult, and often requires a system re-test for each modification to the process.
With Workflow Foundation, the low-level process building-blocks don't really change, but they can be wrapped up above the level of spaghetti code into "activities", such as "create workspace", "invite member", "wait for data change", and so on. WF Activities are inherently re-usable, and the process-design phase is concerned with connecting activity-level modules into a sequence or state machine, rather than down in the code.
So, for my devcon demo I installed a copy of the WinFX February CTP and the WF Visual Studio extensions, a SharePoint server, and Groove, and started coding. A couple days later, I had an integration framework which is incomplete, but clean and powerful enough for pedagogic purposes at least. Enough people seem to like the demo, so we'll try build this out to the point where you could deploy a real system with it.
