Jump 1 into WFF, Let's Jump

In the business world, workflow is how an item is moved from one person to another through a process. That process is the business process, and it defines the steps necessary to complete a piece of work. Steps in the process can be required or optional. Let’s spot on the second two business workflow:

For Example, you might have a process that automatically updates a sales order as complete, and sends an e-mail notice to the customer and the sales person when a sales order is shipped.

Another Example, a business process for a vacation request might be that the employee must provide some information, such as the dates requested, to his or her supervisor. Then, the employee's supervisor must determine if the employee has vacation time to use, and if the date or dates requested are available for vacation. The supervisor must provide the date information to the human resources department. Finally, the human resources department verifies that all policies have been followed, and provides the information to accounting at the appropriate time so payroll adjustments can be made.

So in software planet, we try to build solution that fit the business requirements for our customers with different rules & conditions including variety of business workflows. Implementing workflows would require a lot of while loops and if branching but Microsoft introduces a new component in .Net 3.0 framework called workflow foundation (WFF)

Microsoft .Net 3.0 consists of the following component:

• .Net Framework
• Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation
• Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation
• Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation

But why we go for consuming time and effort to learn WFF, The biggest reason to create workflow, is that you're creating a model (like flowchart, UML diagram) but in WFF the model and workflow is the same thing. Finally, WF allows processes to change on the fly. You can change the process while instances of the process are running, and the instances will adhere to the new process.

In this series, we will jump into workflow foundation, and extend our skills to develop business solutions depending on WFF but note that workflow is not an application or a server product, and is included as a component of the .Net 3.0 framework. So once you develop workflow you can host it on any application according to your business requirements such as windows forms, windows services, ASP.Net, web services, console application, and SharePoint server.

You can build workflow by using markup or code or combination between markup and code

Before we start our jump I want to mention the difference between workflow foundation and BizTalk server is WFF is a platform for developing workflow within applications but BizTalk server is a server product targeted for business process automation.

There are two major types of workflows:

1. Sequential workflows: used for well-defined, process workflows, Sequential workflow is a workflow whose steps are performed one right after the other, but might include branching. Steps in a Sequential workflow don't wait for an external entity to perform the next step.
2. State Machine workflows: Organized as state machine diagrams, typically used for workflows with human interaction. A state-based workflow means that each step of the flow has criteria that must be met before the flow can continue to the next step. A state-based workflow waits on external entities to perform some action before moving to the next step.