WWF and Business User

Hi,
I would like to have clarifications on the usage of WWF in a business environment.

Lets take a scenario in a company XYZ.

The company XYZ can have multiple internal processes. for example ...
1. Leave application processing
2. Sales Order Processing
3. Purchase Request processing

Consider that we have one .net application managing these processes. And all these processes involve human approvals. How should the business user go about creating the workflows How should the developer map workflows to specific business processes

Can you please direct me to a sample if there is one.

thanks in advance
-karthikeyan

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WWF and Business User

CharlesOC
You can build an application which allows business users to modify the workflow model during a workflows execution. The programming model that we have built allows this with a feature area called workflow change. There is a webcast on this coming up on Dec 8th 2005 focussing on this topic. You can view all the workflow webcasts and click through to register here.

Regards,
Paul
John Clien
Microsofts WFRules API alows you to create custom rule editors to modify a policy that can be picked up by a workflow process.

An example of a customized business rules editing environment is the Rule Manager
George Eckert

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) does not come with a business user interface for developing workflows. All of the WF tools including the workflow designer are for software developers. Two exampes of software applications built on WF that provide business user interfaces are Microsoft Office "12" and SourceCode K2.

To be part of the Office "12" Beta 1 program please contact your local Microsoft account manager. This is not a public beta so there is no URL to link you to.

The three business processes that you describe could be implemented easily in either of these two products. Alternatively you could gather functional requirements from the business user and build a .NET application that includes workflows representing those business processes. Here is a webcast presented by Chris Auld describing a similar business process to the three that you mention.

Regards,
Paul
Farrukh Akhtar

If these business processes are independent of each other, I would imagine that there should be different workflows, one for yeah business process.

I can imagine that the .NET application managing the business processes can either host the WWF or be replaced by WWF so that all business processes can be managed through WWF. Each activity and event sink should map directly to a step in the business process and components can be created to handle each activity and event.

If there are human approvals involved, you should have an event driven section of the workflow essentially waiting for certain event to be triggered and do some business process/activity based on the event triggered by human.

The hands-on Lab on www.windowsworkflowfoundation.net can walk you through each of the capabilities of WWF.
JimKennelly
Thanks Paul. This answers my query. I checked the webcast by Chris Auld. From this I understand that WWF is primarily meant for the developers to build the application flow. And the business owners will not be able to alter this process if they want to.

I am curious about your comment ...
"Alternatively you could gather functional requirements from the business user and build a .NET application that includes workflows representing those business processes"

If I were to build a human based workflow solution using WWF where a business user can contribute and control the process what should be my approach. Your directions will be of immense help.

thanks in advance
karthikeyan k
WWF and Business User

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