Migrating SharePoint Designer Workflows
by Vikram Kartik
Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Designer 2007 Bible
- Copyright
- About the Author
- Dedication
- Credits
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Understanding the Technologies
- Developing Web Page Components
- Implementing Components and Controls
- Designing Web Sites
- Driving with Data
- Developing Workflows
- Managing and Publishing Web Sites
- Index
21.3. Migrating SharePoint Designer Workflows
Workflows created with SharePoint Designer are associated with a SharePoint list or library by using the list or library's Globally Unique Identifier (GUID). This association is very important for a workflow to initiate properly for the list items. When deciding to migrate lists with workflows created with SharePoint Designer, it's essential to choose a method that maintains the association of the workflow with the list or library's GUID.
NOTE
Workflows created by SharePoint Designer are always associated with the particular list or library. To use the workflow with a different list or library, the workflow needs to be remodified in Workflow Designer to choose the new list. So, this section is about the best practices to use to migrate lists and libraries without breaking the associated workflows.
The following are the recommended methods for migrating lists in SharePoint without irreparably losing the workflow associations:
Save Site as a Template: SharePoint allows you to save a Web site as a template. Saving the SharePoint site as a template allows you to reuse the customizations made to the Web site for creating new sites. If you save the SharePoint site where you created your workflows by using SharePoint Designer as a template and then create a new site based on that template, you should be able to reuse the workflows associated with the lists on the new site. It's very important to note that you should include content while saving the site as a template for the workflows to successfully migrate.
Content Deployment: MOSS offers a content management mechanism that allows administrators to deploy content from a source SharePoint farm to a destination farm. This feature, called Content Deployment, can be used to migrate SharePoint Web applications from one server to another. The migration is performed to ensure that the SharePoint workflow associations and functionality are maintained on the destination server.
SharePoint backup and restore: SharePoint backup and restore using the SharePoint Central Administration Web site or using the stsadm backup/restore commands ensures that the SharePoint workflows are properly saved and work as expected when the SharePoint site is restored from backup.
Databases backup and restore: If you restore the SharePoint Web applications from SQL server database backups, you should be able to restore the SharePoint Designer workflows to work properly. Restoring the SharePoint Web application from the SQL content database backup is a standard disaster recovery process when the SharePoint server farm is offline due to an unforeseeable problem. The restore ensures that SharePoint Designer maintains the association with the lists or libraries.
Realizing that SharePoint Designer workflows once associated with a SharePoint list or document library need the association to be maintained throughout is important and should help you understand and choose the best migration strategy for your environment. While re-creating the workflows might be the best course of action in some cases, the methods described earlier can assist administrators in planning the backup strategies around SharePoint Designer workflows.
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