Why themes needed in workflows?

Why themes needed in workflows?

• nery_jose

  Hi Sergey,

  Themes allow customising of the look of the rehostable workflow designer for use in third party applications.

  Regards,
  Paul

  
  
  

• Anonymous233e

  You are welcome. And I agree with your comments about building an end user workflow designer. You want to make it very specific to the application that you are building and reduce the choice so that it's easier for the end user to understand what they have to do.

  Regards,
  Paul

  
  
  

• Nick Jovanelly

  Hi Paul!
  
  Thanks for response. I unmarked your post to be answer for now, because I need a little deeper understanding reasons why themes needed. My question is a little provocative. Hope you & other people help me get to answer
  
  I see that I can change themes, I can host workflow designer in my app, but who is the user of this feature Other developers, technically skilled half-developers (like biz process analyst) Not solution's average end-user.
  
  So why MS waste time, resources and add complexity by this themes in WWF It appears to me as it's playing a toy, somebody decide that themes are cool stuff and add it there. In fact themes much more suitable for applications for end-users, like Notepad, Calculator, etc.
  
  I have resourceful computer, dual core CPU, 2GB RAM, SATA HDD... - but themes designer runs bad, it feels like I drag something huge, that is slow.
  
  So I understand that I may be do not see something right before my nose , but is it really required feature in developer product where productivity is much more important than ability to create skins Is there were no more important things to do in WWF
  
  
  

• Smafuda

  Well, that make sense. From MS side you provide ISV with tools to create themes and easily incorporate them into their products. From ISV side - provide workflow designer for customers, which is, for example, accountants
  
  I worked with such kind of end users, I spent few years working as support & implementation engineer in tight contact with end users and this is really great experience that required for any professional developer. This help to understand end user and create applications for him. One thing I understand very clear - you must not give them control or much choice. Yes. This sounds hard, but it's true. If end user have choice, he will stray from his primary job function and begin to roam here and there. So, providing workflow designers for end users - it's really question for discussion. I thought that workflow designers must be available for analyst or developer, but not to the end users.
  
  Anyway, thanks for response . Now I have better understanding for reason this feature exists here.
  
  
  

• A. S.

  Hi Sergey,

  Theme's are not an end user feature, rather it is provided for ISV's.

  The workflow designer is a component of WF that can be rehosted in an ISV application. ISV's can use this designer so that their customers can create and edit workflows. ISV's building their own software are a key audience of the workflow designer and the reason that it was made rehostable.

  Since ISV's often spend some effort in creating a user interface for their products we added theme support so that these ISV's could make the workflow designer look like it fitted in with their applications. This way we avoided providing a designer that looked good in Visual Studio but really didn't fit with our customer applications.

  Regards,
  Paul

  
  
  
• Why themes needed in workflows?