Chapter 21. Administrating Workflows
Exploring SharePoint workflow settings
Viewing workflow reports
Migrating SharePoint Designer workflows
Troubleshooting workflows
Workflows created by SharePoint Designer depend on SharePoint services provided by WSS v3 and MOSS. If you try to create workflows on a site that's not SharePoint 3.0 (WSS v3 and MOSS), you receive messages indicating the inability of the Web server to support workflows. This dependency of SharePoint Designer workflows on SharePoint requires that you ensure that the workflows are set up properly on a SharePoint Web server.
Workflows available in SharePoint out of the box (for example, Three State, Collect Feedback, etc.) are installed as Features on the SharePoint Web server. Unlike SharePoint Designer workflows, which need to be associated with a particular list before they're deployed to a SharePoint site, these default workflows can be associated with any list by using a SharePoint Web site. You use a SharePoint site user interface to associate these workflows with the list or library of your choice.
NOTE
Features is a term used to define a way of implementing a functionality in SharePoint 3.0. Most of the common functions on a SharePoint site, such as lists, document libraries, etc., are implemented as features. The default feature files are stored at C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft Sharedweb server extensions12TEMPLATEFEATURES on the SharePoint Web server. Developers can create and deploy their own custom features to SharePoint servers.
Most of the settings in the SharePoint global and site-level administration Web pages apply to SharePoint out-of-the-box workflows. However, there are some important settings that a Web designer using SharePoint Designer to create declarative workflows should keep in mind. While some workflow settings are available in the SharePoint administration Web pages and can be set by using the site user interface, many settings related to workflows can only be made using stsadm.exe, the command-line administration tool for SharePoint.
This chapter takes you through these settings and explains how you can use them to avoid problems when creating workflows in SharePoint Designer. Later in this chapter, I discuss troubleshooting common problems with SharePoint Designer workflows.