Comments on: SharePoint Workflow != Business Process Management (BPM)

By: sarbjit singh

sarbjit singh — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:21:47 +0000

Allow me to add something here.
i read the marked off content –> “update the workflows every two weeks (exaggeration?) as the business process changes, then you should be ok. But how many companies out there can actually afford to do that right? ”

Note in BizTalk server, the business rules component allows a business manager to change business rules on the fly. So you really don’t need a developer to be keeping jumping in to change the workflow bases on changing business rules.

Again this is about business process workflows/managements and not the human centric workflow, even if i always think BizTalk can do that with a SharePoint/InfoPath front-end.

Sarbjit

By: Russ Blaesing

Russ Blaesing — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:05:10 +0000

Henri,

Excellent Post! I’m completely with you, except with respect to what you attach to the term “SharePoint Workflow”. If you used “Microsoft’s SharePoint Workflow System” then you’re right on. However, if you referred to, say, http://www.spsworkflow.com/sharepoint-workflow.ashx, with the associated capabilities listed in http://www.spsworkflow.com/sharepoint-workflow-designer.ashx, then you can do all of the things you mentioned you can’t do using “SharePoint Workflow”.

Hope this makes sense. The reality is that Microsoft’s tool just isn’t very functional, while other tools provide true cross-system Business Process Management in their workflow system.

By: Derek Miers

Derek Miers — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:07:52 +0000

Should have included a link to the site … http://www.bpmfocus.org

By: Derek Miers

Derek Miers — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:07:07 +0000

I think you are bang up against many issues … all of which I explored in great depth in my White Paper – SharePoint as a Strategic Weapon … which is all about the issues associated with Shpt and Process, down to and including the underlying Windows Workflow Foundation, which IMNSHO is a bit limiting.

Have a look at the web site – you will find the paper on Page 5 of the White Papers area, but you will need to register to get it (BTW – registration on the BPM Focus site requires use of a valid email address … don’t worry we wont spam you and you can easily opt out of future communication later)

By: Gabriele Del Giovine

Gabriele Del Giovine — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 08:31:33 +0000

Hi Henry, like John sayd there is a lot of confusion in SharePoint Workflows and about SharePoint WWF Visual Studio based workflows capabilities. Lack of functionalities, versioning, reporting, assignment policies too many code to write. In SP2010 we have little enhacements like reusable workflow but nothing more. In my opinion the real problem relies inside the workflow engine adopted by SharePoint: WWF. WWF demonstrates a lot of problem when hosted inside an IIS process. More, WWF is a very basic Workflow engine.

By: stefan demetz

stefan demetz — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 07:59:57 +0000

Sharepoint is more of a human workflow type of tool … even if one can do lots of things via code … in the 2010 version Visio will non IT people help in designing flowcharts, so it will more BPM-like

for system workflows Biztalk is more appropriated …

MS doesn’t have a well-rounded BPM offering (which IMHO, MS is missing a huge boat to let non-IT people easily knit MS software together), so for more advanced all-in-one environment one needs to go to buy third-party software …

By: Henry

Henry — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 02:24:52 +0000

Hey Mike! Thank you for the comments as well. I’ve updated my post to hopefully make it more clear to future readers that my intentions were not to confuse them about what you can’t do with SharePoint workflows but to use it as a lead-in to future posts about third-party SharePoint workflow/BPM solutions.

By: John Holliday

John Holliday — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 01:41:55 +0000

Henry, I agree there is a lot of confusion out there, and I appreciate your efforts to shine the light of clarity on this increasingly important topic. I look forward to reading your next posts and hearing more about your experiences.

I think the term “SharePoint Workflow” is inherently misleading, because there are 3 kinds of SharePoint Workflow. There are “Sequential”, “State-Machine” and “Declarative No-Code” workflows, each with its own set of strengths and weaknesses. The “SharePoint Designer” workflows you are describing in your post are “Declarative No-Code” workflows, which admittedly are much more limited in scope than the other two.

However, even the declarative no-code workflows can be extended with custom activities so that you end up with very powerful capabilities that are accessible directly from SharePoint Designer. In the same way that a well-designed library of server controls can greatly improve the productivity of web developers, a well-designed activity library can enable power users to automate fairly complex business processes.

By: Henry

Henry — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 01:16:49 +0000

Hey John! Firstly, thank you for commenting. You’ve made some very good points especially in terms of my conclusions being overstated and cursory.

My first intention is not to degrade SharePoint in any way but to point out the differences between the 2 subjects as they are often misunderstood to be one in the same. I think this is especially true amongst business users since Microsoft doesn’t have a BPM product that also enables business users to design and implement processes outside of Visual Studio (does BizTalk have a non-Visual Studio tool for business users?).

My second intention, which should’ve been stated from the beginning, is that my analysis is based on solely what you get out of the box and through SharePoint Designer. Without creating custom actions or opening up Visual Studio, I stand by my statements unless I’m smoking a crack pipe and am totally missing it (you can tell me that, I won’t be offended ).

The statement I made in regards to SharePoint workflows not scaling outside of SharePoint only applies to OOTB + SharePoint Designer. I believe once you get into Visual Studio there really are no boundaries and practically anything is possible.

If there’s anything else that’s sticking out as incorrect, please do let me know. We learn something new everyday!

By: Mike Oryszak

Mike Oryszak — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:44:30 +0000

I agree with John, Workflow != BPM. While the features fall well short of a mid to high end Enterprise BPM tool there are some very useful features there that provide much needed functionality to the business to help bridge the gap.

The biggest exception I take is its ability to scale and integrate with other systems. I’ve managed to integrate SharePoint’s workflows with a number of third party tools and have instantiated a workflow automatically from an outside system. There are no real limitations here.

I think you may want to revisit some of these points.