Guest Author: Jason MacKenzie
Intelligence Among Us

Everyone with an intermediate level of knowledge with SharePoint knows that there are 3 ways to create workflows that act on SharePoint lists/libraries.  In ascending order of complexity and flexibility they are:  OOTB SharePoint workflows, SharePoint designer workflows and custom developed Visual Studio workflows.

Imagine the folllowing scenario with which I have been faced.  Working with a user to implement a mission-critical business process that is focused on the steps required to acknoweldge and act on changes to customer requirements.  The workflow is developed, tested and rolled out – in production.  Everyone is happy.

A few months later a request for a change to the process is made which necessitates a change to the workflow that has 50 workflows currently in process.  How do we test that exactly?  Good question and there is no easy answer.

Since a SharePoint workflow is associated with a list based on a GUID that is environment specific you can’t do it without some ridiculous (in my view) manual steps that are outlined very nicely at my favourite SharePoint site – End User SharePoint.  http://www.endusersharepoint.com/2008/12/08/why-can%e2%80%99t-i-easily-port-sharepoint-designer-workflow-solutions-from-one-list-to-another-part-1/. 

In my view this is a deal-breaker for using SP workflow for automating business critical processes.  I’ll be attending the SP 2009 conference next month and will be eager to see if and how this has been addressed.  In the meantime if anyone has any experience with dealing with this issue I’m interested in hearing your feedback.

Guest Author: Jason MacKenzie
Intelligence Among Us

Jason has been an IT professional for 12 years and has worked in a variety of roles from software development to managing business solutions for a large international automotive supplier.  He has developed mission critical software solutions for the manufacturing industry and has experience in the government and educational fields as well. 

Jason is a social networking enthusiast and is currently working to harness the power of Enterprise 2.0 in his current organization, Magna International.  This passion led Jason to move into a role focused completely on the SharePoint platform with key responsibilities around architecture, governance, hand-holding and facilitating a good group cry every now and again.  Jason’s goal is to actively participate in the community and share what I have learned in order to help people and business leverage their investment in this critical platform.