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One of the things that my team is working on is the next version of the workflow designer. In order to help us get real feedback, we engaged with our usability teams to design and execute a usability study. For details on what the test looks like (when we did them 3 years ago for the first version of the WF designer, see this great channel9 video ). The setup is still the same (one way glass mirror, cameras tracking the face, screen, posture of the subject), the only difference is the software, we're busy testing out some new concepts to make workflow development much more productive. At this stage of the lifecycle, we're really experimenting with some different designer metaphors, and a usability test is a great way to get real feedback. One thing I've always tried to do since I came to Microsoft is being sucked into the Redmond bubble. The symptoms of placement inside said bubble are a gradual removal from the reality that everyday developers face. When I came to the company two years ago, I was chock full of great thoughts and ideas from the outside, and much less tolerant of the "well, that's just how it works" defense. Slowly, though, as you start to get deep into thinking about a problem, and tightly focusing on that problem, those concerns start to fade away, as you look to optimize the experience you are providing. Sitting in on the usability labs yesterday was a great reminder to me of how easily one can slip into Read More...
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So, I got a little bit of feedback from my initial post . First, thanks, it's great to see all of the interest in the technology. I want to use this as the place to answer common questions that arise about the sample. Here's one that I got internally as well as externally( here , here ) What about WCSF and Acropolis? Does this change how we think about the problem today? The short answers are "they are still here", "no". WCSF There are a lot of people who are using the Web Client Software Factory . It is definitely something you should check out, it is a great toolkit to build composite web applications. Part of what it does, among many other things, is the Pageflow Application Block designed to model navigation. This is what most people are wondering about when they first hear about the pageflow sample we released. Don't they do the same thing? From a functional level, yes, they both provide a nice abstraction to model flow through an application. This is a sample usage of WF to solve a similar problem in a little bit of a different way. The model inside the WCSF is extensible, allowing a different provider of pageflow information, so it is probably even possible to put this pageflow sample inside of the WCSF, I have yet to give that a try. At a deeper level, there are some differences that stem from the implementation of the Pageflow Application Block as a state machine, which I will get into in my next post. Acropolis Acropolis , announced at TechEd last week, is still early Read More...
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Here's a comment from my initial post introducing the pageflow sample from wleong: NavigatorWorkflow looks like a state machine to me. Why create a new workflow type? Tuesday, June 12, 2007 3:44 AM by wleong This is a good question. There a couple of reasons why we create our own workflow type: To more accurately model a process Enable different execution semantics Make development faster by focusing on the model, not the implementation details. For a little more background on the problem, see my previous post on " Different Execution Patterns for WF (or, Going beyond Sequential and State Machine) " that talks in a little more depth about the trouble one can encounter by only think about the two out of the box models. For this problem, in particular, all of the reasons are relevant. Accurately modeling a process It is very natural to think of UI navigation as a series of places we can be, and a set of transitions from any one of those places to another. That's what the navigator workflow models. There is a subtle difference from a state machine that plays to point 3 here. This model allows me to not worry about putting an IEventActivity at the top of a state, then making some decision and then setting a new state. We abstract away from defining the events, that's taken care of for us. This lets us model the process naturally. In a state machine, one could argue that modeling pageflow with transitions has me place one event and then have an IfElse activity that lets me decide which Read More...
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My peer, David , has a great screencast posted on Channel9 that shows off a solution from FullArmor that incorporates WF and PowerShell and one really cool looking designer. On my list of cool things to check out when I have free time (currently June 2015) is PowerShell. It's a great tool for devs to make their apps much more managable, by both devs and our dear friends, the IT Pro. David has built some samples that build right on top of things to return collections of data in order to PowerShell enable them. Check it out here Read More...
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In March 2007 Microsoft plans to release a CTP of a set of BPEL activities for Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). This will be called BPEL for Windows Workflow Foundation March CTP and the CTP release will implement the BPEL 1.1 specification. The final...( read more ) Read More...
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We established that Windows Workflow Foundation isn't an end user product in a recent entry . In this entry I want to give my opinions on what software developers should be using WF for. WF is a new capability in the .NET Framework 3.0 that developers...( read more ) Read More...
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The SharePoint team originally primarily targetted information workers in providing a workflow development environment for their SharePoint Designer product when they released Windows SharePoint Services v3. For developers who prefer Visual Studio for...( read more ) Read More...
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Just posted today: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb266709.aspx This new article and sample provide a great demo and example code for using WF and WCF together for building workflow-enabled services. It is a rebuild of an Expense Reporting demo...( read more ) Read More...
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One of the cool things coming in BizTalk R2 is a tracking service for WF that talks to BAM. Jesus Rodriguez has put together a walkthrough of using the BizTalk Server R2 BAM interceptor for WF . Read More...
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I get asked this question a bit from people who have heard of WF but have not read much about it. This applies to BizTalk Server 2006, Office SharePoint Server 2007, SourceCode K2, Skelta, Captaris, other BPM products, etc. Here's how I explain it. I'll...( read more ) Read More...
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Since my last post we've had the Christmas holidays and I had a relaxing break. We also had a power outtage for four and a half days which was less relaxing. Today I'm catching up on some of the goings on around Windows Workflow Foundation with a link...( read more ) Read More...
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A few weeks back Paul Andrew and I sat down with Ron Jacobs to record this Arcast about WF. The funny thing is that a few weeks before that, Paul Andrew and I sat down with Ron Jacobs to record that same Arcast, except there was a problem with the microphone and Ron's voice didn't get recorded, so it was as if Paul and I were extemporaneously responding to the voices in our heads about WF. There are more questions to go through, so we will be doing at least a part 2. Any feedback or other questions you want to see answered? Let me know! Read More...
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Previously I've posted about customers engaging with the WF TAP program . TAP is Technology Adoption Program and it was a program that we started for a small select group of customers when WF wasn't even named. I've posted about Six Microsoft products...( read more ) Read More...
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Here's a project that's somewhat unique and is a really interesting use of Windows Workflow Foundation. It involves using WF to coordinate work items in Microsoft Compute Cluster Server which are then executed on the cluster. Marc Holmes worked on it...( read more ) Read More...
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I arrived into SEA yesterday around 3, so I'm feeling a little bit of the 'lag from my week in Barcelona. A few things to point out: Tim has a fantastic "Vista on the M400" post. The little dude's getting an upgrade while this gets typed, results in a future post Kudos to who-ever put together this diagram . I think it could be made a bit better by having links to the section of MSDN which further explains how to dev, say, win32 or hybrid applications, but it's a nice way to represent and download the bits you're interested in. The long awaited WF perf whitepaper is available, as Paul points out . As Paul mentions, the 10K empty workflows per second is not a number one should run out a room assuming can be obtained, but there are a few things that I really liked seeing: What happens when we scale out? Should I implement a while loop in my code to loop 1000 times, or should I use the While activity? This is one of my favorite examples when people ask "How should I think about moving to a WF driven design?" I like this paper as it explains things in terms of trade-offs. Finally, beneath figure 13, the discussion of the overhead involved with using the tracking service is discussed. This is important, and it shows the difference between batching and not batching the "transactions" of the tracking service. Transaction is mentioned in quotes as these have little to do with System.Transactions, rather when tracking data is written to the database. The number to notice here is not just Read More...
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