WF News and Announcements

WF Activities Survey

2007-10-23T16:01:00Z

With VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 just around the corner, the team has been starting to focus on what else we can do. The group focused on building activities has created a survey here, and would really appreciate any feedback you can give them about the dev, design, or usage of activities in your scenarios.

Again, the survey is here.

VS 2008 Beta 2 Released

2007-07-30T20:11:00Z

This past Friday we released Beta 2 of Visual Studio that contains the .NET Framework 3.5. Get it here. This releases stabilizes a lot of the stuff which had been in the previous releases, and includes some of the new tools, like the WCF test client. The main feature relating to WF is the introduction of the Workflow Services project templates which contain a complete, working implmentation of a WCF service as a WF workflow using the new send and receive activities.

Visual Studio "Orcas" Beta 1 Released!

2007-04-19T17:52:00Z

As noted on Soma's blog here, you can now download Beta 1 of Visual Studio "Orcas." This has the new WF+WCF workflow enabled service functionality baked in, and will be the source of a lot of additional blog posts and samples in the coming days and weeks. Stay tuned to the community blog roll to hear what other WF developers are saying about it, and let us know if you'd like your blog included in the roll.

All the usual warnings about installing beta software on production machines do apply, so have fun and let us know what you think!

Update: You can also check out Soma on Channel9.

.NET Framework 3.0 Training Kit

2007-02-13T18:37:00Z

We've posted a training kit for the .NET Framework 3.0 which contains content for WF, WCF and CardSpace. There is a lot of content in here, 4 days worth of presentations as well as labs and demos. Check it out here.

DinnerNow Published

2007-02-01T22:02:00Z

The team here in Redmond has been focused on putting together a pretty cool demo scenario. It's called DinnerNow, and I think you'd like to check it out.

http://www.dinnernow.net

I have more details on my blog here.

XAML Schema for WF Published

2007-01-31T01:09:00Z

This sample schema submitted here will allow you to get XML intellisense inside of Visual Studio while editing the XAML contained inside of the workflow .xoml files. Many thanks to the team that submitted it. The install instructions and caveats are listed on the MSDN site which the sample links to.

RTM

2006-11-08T08:15:08Z

Matt here, live from Barcelona. It's out the door! Go, grab the bits, make workflows, enjoy the happiness! Details here.

WF Training Materials (free *)

2006-10-11T16:11:21Z

* For now.

Until the consumer launch of Vista, Microsoft Learning (MSL) is offering a set of eLearning clinics for WF, WCF and WPF. Each of these is about 2 hours long and offers presentations, samples, and guided tours of code creation at a broad level of understanding of the whole technology. After the launch of Vista, they will be charging for these, but until then, you can access them for free here.

If you've got any feedback on these, please contact us and let us know.

New WF Bloggers

2006-10-05T15:37:29Z

There are a few new bloggers from the team who are blogging, and I wanted to take a minute to point them out:

Don's McBlog (rss)
Rules Team Blog (rss)
Mark Schmidt (rss) (he's been blogging for a while but I did not have him included in the roll)

If you're out there blogging about WF and would like to be included in our blog roll, let me know and we'll get that set up.

.NET Framework 3.0 RC Available

2006-09-02T00:42:00Z

Get the bits here.

Find out about Go-Live options here.

WF Key Changes from beta 2.2 located here.

24 Workflow Screencasts

2006-08-11T16:24:00Z

The other day, someone directed me to Mike Taulty's blog (http://mtaulty.com/blog/ ) where he has some fantastic posts about using Windows Workflow Foundation (check out his post on long running activities). Mike also has put together a ton (24 as of today) screencasts on using WF.

These have been added to a new screencasts directory in the file area. Dive in and check them out. If you've got screencasts that you're doing, feel free to upload those as well. Once they get approved, they will be added into this directory.

Hands-On Labs for RC Builds

2006-08-08T19:18:00Z

Someone pinged me this morning looking for the hands-on-labs for the recent builds of WF, and I realized that I did not have this out on the community site anywhere. So, here they are. If you encounter any troubles with the labs, head on over to the forums and ask away!

Beta 2.2 to RC2 Key Changes Document Posted

2006-07-10T21:04:00Z

Interested in knowing what changed where? Download this document which outlines the key changes between our beta 2.2 release and our RC2 release, which was included with the June CTP of the .NET Framework 3.0.

That link, again is: http://wf.netfx3.com/files/folders/documentation/entry4272.aspx

In Production with WF? Let us know!

2006-06-27T17:20:00Z

Do you have a solution, or a customer, who have gone into production with Windows Workflow Foundation using our Go-Live license? If you're in production, we'd be interested to know more about your solution. Drop us a line at adoptwf@microsoft.com and let us know what you're doing!

June CTP Available, RC Build of WF

2006-06-23T19:48:00Z

Get your bits here! There's a new CTP is available, and this includes an RC (Release Candidate) build of Windows Workflow Foundation. What does this mean to you? If you've been holding off diving into WF because you're worried about big changes between now and release, you should start thinking about using this build. You can use the drop down box up top to selected "Download WF" or you can follow these links:

.NET Framework 3.0 Runtime - first time with the new name, this may become a collector's item someday!
Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Windows Workflow Foundation Release Candidate 2

Additionally, there are newly updated versions of our Hands On Labs. These are a great way to dive into the different areas of the technology. Check them out here.

This build also includes the updates the ManualWorkflowSchedulerService that Paul blogged about here. This should help in scenarios where you want to use timers inside of a workflow being run by the ManualWorkflowSchedulerService, such as an ASP.NET application.

Known issues are listed here.