SharePoint comes with several workflow templates out of the box. These are generally installed as features, and are available for you to associate with lists or at the site level.
Workflow forms are the means by which a user interacts with workflow in SharePoint. These Forms are:
- Association Form
- Initiation Form
- Task Form
- Modification Form
Let’s discuss these forms in details.
- Create a new list “Workflow Forms” based on the Custom List Template.
- Go to list settings page of this list and view the Versioning Settings.
- Under Versioning settings choose to “require content approval for submitted items”.
- Under Permissions and Management section, click Workflow Settings.
- Click Add a workflow link to visit Workflow settings page.
- Choose “Approval – SharePoint 2010″ workflow and name it “Workflow Forms”.
- Click Next button.
- Here comes the first type of form – Association Form, which is an out of the box InfoPath form.
Association Form – An association form is what allows the workflow to interact with the user when the workflow is first associated with a list.
- Fill out the fields as shown above.
Note: I have checked the check box for “Enable Content Approval”. This means that the completion of this workflow will approve the associated list item that this workflow is running upon.
- Click Save.
- Add Items to the list.
- Select the Item and Click Workflow in ECB menu.
- Click Workflow Forms
- Now the next form that appears is Initiation Form.
Initiation Form: The “initiation form” is what allows the system to ask questions when a workflow is first initiated/instantiated.
- Click the Start button to start the workflow.
By starting the workflow, the specified approver will be sent an e-mail message, and a task will be created for them requesting to come and approve the item. In the SharePoint site, the task is created in a list called “Workflow Tasks“. You specified this list name right before association form. There is another list you specified when creating this association, called “Workflow History“. This is a hidden list and will store all the history activities of the running workflows.
- Open the Task List http://sitename/WorkflowTasks/AllItems.aspx.
- Click on the Task.
- Here comes the next form – The Task Form.
Task Form: The workflow can create tasks for users, and those tasks can then be performed by the end users. Those tasks go in a list, and can be represented as yet another kind of form, called as the “Task Form”.
- Click Approve to approve the item.
- There is another form called Modification Form that appears if you click “Request Change” or “Reassign Task” buttons
Note: Note that a workflow can have zero or one association forms, it can have zero or one initiation forms, but it can have many task forms.
Go to the list and check the status of the item. You would note that the item that the workflow was running upon has now been approved.
Now, let me show you something really cool! Click Approved under the Workflow Form column. Assuming that you have office web applications installed in the current site collection you’re working in, and you have activated the “SharePoint Server Enterprise Site Collection features”, and that Visio Services of configured on your web application, you should see a graphical view of the current workflow instance as shown below
This is really amazing because it gives the user a friendly graphical view of the current workflow instance with the necessary values populated. On the same page, you would also see the historical tasks, and the workflow history associated with this instance of the workflow. This is information that most organizations would find extremely helpful.
I hope you would have enjoyed the session. Let me know your feedbacks.
Also read my previous blog on How to Customize out-of-box workflow.
Enjoy SharePoint!
