Workflow Archives - Daniel Glenn

SharePoint Workflows are Dead (Almost)

Daniel — Mon, 20 Jul 2020 04:34:22 +0000

The end of support for “SharePoint 2010 workflows” in Microsoft 365 will be November 1st, 2020. The title of the blog post, Support update for SharePoint 2010 workflows in Microsoft 365, doesn't make it clear, but we are seeing the beginning of the end for SharePoint workflows in SharePoint Online. This is truly the end of SharePoint workflow. End of SharePoint Workflow It isn't a surprise that Microsoft is moving to not support native workflows in SharePoint. At Microsoft's Ignite conference in 2016, Microsoft announced that support for SharePoint Designer workflows (and InfoPath forms) in SharePoint Server (on-premises) would in time not be supported. The end of support date was stated to be until 2026. However, the key to those announcements and subsequent blog posts was that they were talking about the on-premises versions of SharePoint Server. There has never been a promise to support older versions of workflows in SharePoint Online for that period of time. There also has never been a timeline released when SharePoint workflows would stop being supported in SharePoint Online – until now. At time of publication, the older blog posts announcing the on-premises changes could not be located. What was assumed at the time, though, was that Microsoft would give ample amount of notice when existing workflows would be removed from SharePoint Online. SharePoint 2010 Workflows have been deprecated If you received this warning when you looked at your workflow page, then your tenant has already been affected. So what is actually being changed? Read on. What Exactly is Being Removed There is some confusion because the specific workflow engine being removed is being called “SharePoint 2010”. However, this isn't a signal of the version of SharePoint itself, but the version of the workflow engine. There are two different categories of workflows that are included in the retirement: 1) out of the box workflows that come with SharePoint and 2) workflows created using SharePoint Designer. Out of the Box Workflows There are several out of the box (OOTB) workflows that have been available to configure in document libraries and lists for many past versions of SharePoint. OOTB workflows are easily created and maintained within the SharePoint user interface (UI). These workflows include Approval, Collect Feedback, Collect Signatures, Disposition Approval, and Three-state. These workflows are used widely by power users, developers, and site users. They are configured easily in the UI and because they are OOTB, don't usually fail because of a step that has been configured incorrectly. 2010 Workflows Created with SharePoint Designer The other category of workflows that will be disabled are those created with SharePoint Designer (SPD). SPD is a free application that has been used by power users, administrators, and developers around the world to edit SharePoint pages, modify settings, and create powerful workflows. Both SharePoint Designer 2010 and SharePoint Designer 2013 versions can create 2010 workflows – the workflow author chooses what engine when they first create the workflow. When Will SharePoint Workflows be Disabled? As reported in the blog announcement, there are several dates to keep in mind. August 1st, 2020 – after August 1st, any new Microsoft 365 tenants will have 2010 workflows disabled. November 1st, 2020 – on November 1st, Microsoft will begin disabling all 2010 workflows on all sites. Also in November 2020, 2013 workflows will be disabled by default for any newly created Microsoft 365 tenants. Are 2013 Workflows Being Removed? If this is the end of SharePoint workflow, are 2013 workflows being removed too? Starting in November 2020, Microsoft will disable 2013 workflows by default for any newly created tenants. However, administrators will be able to turn it back on via PowerShell. Microsoft is not giving a timeframe for when 2013 workflows will be removed just like 2010 workflows. They will be ‘deprecated' in November 2020, which is the first step in saying they will be removed in the future. It is my opinion that if the process of 2010 workflows goes smoothly, then the 2013 workflows will not be far behind. So what do I mean by ‘smoothly'? My first requirement for this to be ‘smooth' is if customers don't complain too much. Some customers say less than 4 months notice is far too little time. This also comes during a global pandemic that has organization budgets stretched thin. There is a UserVoice created with over 1,000 votes and if you feel the notice of change is too short, you can vote there. My second requirement for this to be ‘smooth' is if removing the workflows is successfully performed and happens without causing issues for sites. What Do We Do Now? A good resource to help you get started in the process is Microsoft's support article SharePoint 2010 workflow retirement. The page lists how to identify your workflows, and says you should recreate the workflows in Power Automate. The first step will be to identify the workflows you have running on your sites using the SharePoint modernization scanner. Second, organizations need to identify which of the workflows in their environment are being used and should be recreated in Power Automate. This second step might take some time if you have been using SharePoint for many business processes in your environment. The third step is to then recreate the workflows in Power Automate. There are five points to go into this process. Working with the owners to recreate the workflow Incorporating any process improvements Identifying gaps in Power Automate functionality that might need more complex processes Testing Running a change management program to roll out the new workflows That could be a tremendous amount of work. You need to know if you can make progress during the 3.5 months you have before your workflows are disabled. Need Help? If you find that you need some help with any of the steps above to meet the deadline, make sure you contact me! Fill-out my contact form and let me help.

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Introducing Microsoft Lists home – #153

Daniel — Tue, 14 Jul 2020 05:29:53 +0000

This week on the 365 Message Center Show Announced at Microsoft Build, the first stage of Microsoft Lists will start arriving in tenants late July. The Microsoft Lists home page will bring together recently visited and favorite lists, and you can create a new list from scratch. – Retiring SharePoint 2010 Workflows – Cortana Briefing email – Introducing Microsoft Lists home (web) – Updates for Office Pro Plus – Required columns will now sync as read/write – Cortana voice assistance in Teams mobile Join Daniel Glenn and Darrell as a Service Webster as they cover the latest messages in the Microsoft 365 Message Center. Check out Daniel and Darrell's own YouTube channels at: Daniel – https://www.youtube.com/DanielGlenn Darrell – https://www.youtube.com/modernworkplacescenarios Select a podcast app below to open our podcast on your favorite device! Alternatively manually add our podcast via your favorite app: https://www.messagecentershow.com/feed.xml View ALL app options on our website: http://MessageCenter.show See all the other 365 Message Center Show posts: #365MCS Recap Posts

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SharePoint Saturday New York City 2018

Daniel — Mon, 25 Jun 2018 19:45:26 +0000

SharePoint Saturday New York City 2018 will be a fantastic conference and I will be delivering a joint presentation with Sarah Haase this year! We will be giving a new session titled Driving adoption of Microsoft Flow, one solution at a time. In the session, you will learn the essentials of the Microsoft Flow service and how it can be used to drive business value. You'll also learn how to showcase custom workflow templates for your organization to give your users a jump-start with Microsoft Flow. Registration is open – join us on July 28th!

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IT/Dev Connections 2017

Daniel — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 15:00:27 +0000

[UPDATED] It was a great week in San Francisco! The #ITDEVConnections conference is a high-quality event that focuses on real-world technical sessions and the conference delivered. Both of my sessions had good participation from attendees – I enjoyed answering questions and getting to know everyone. My first session topic was how you can plan and execute a transition from SharePoint Designer workflows to Microsoft Flow. The slides are available via the IT/Dev Connections website, but there was a question regarding the functionality gaps between Designer and MS Flow – in the session I mentioned a website to keep track of the gaps and here is the link: https://ms.flow.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/release-notes/#known-issues-and-resolutions I also mentioned in the session that you can signup for the PowerApps Community Plan to gain access to PowerApps and Microsoft Flow for free. On the same day as my first session, I participated on an expert panel discussion where we answered questions from attendees and via the moderator, Liam Cleary. Look Ma, I'm on a panel #ITDevConnections @devconnections pic.twitter.com/ipLjFjOqhq — Daniel Glenn (@DanielGlenn) October 24, 2017 In my second session we looked at the business intelligence options in SharePoint, as well as Power BI. One of the great BI additions in SharePoint Online capabilities is column formatting that is currently rolling out. I demonstrated how you can easily use JSON code to style and enhance list views and how that can make a huge difference for your users. There was also a great deal of conversation and questions from the attendees on how to share Power BI content and what licenses are required for sharing. As I stated in the session and is mentioned in the following article, “…to share a dashboard you need a Power BI Pro license, or the content needs to be in a Premium capacity.” If you have any questions or your organization needs help with Power BI implementation, please do reach out to me so we can get you started with secure collaboration and data insights: Contact Page [ORIGINAL POST BELOW] Please join me in San Fransisco for IT/Dev Connections! I will be speaking on October 24th and 25th – I would love to have you join me. On October 2ad4th, I will be presenting Transition Your SharePoint Designer Workflows to Microsoft Flow and on the 25th my presentation will be all about Business Intelligence Using SharePoint and Power BI. If you plan to be at the conference, please let me know so we can meet up! You can register now and join us!

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Cincinnati SharePoint User Group – June 22nd

Daniel — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 16:48:37 +0000

On June 22nd 2017, I will again be speaking to the Cincinnati SharePoint User Group and this time around we will be discussing workflow. I will present the options for creating workflows in SharePoint and Office 365, as well as look at the process (and potential pitfalls) for upgrading your SharePoint Designer workflows to Microsoft Flow. Find details on the topic, as well as register on the Meetup page. [UPDATE] Thank you so much to everyone who came out tonight to the meeting – I had a great time and the group participation was wonderful. I mentioned tonight the Known issues and resolutions page Microsoft is maintaining for Flow – here is the link: https://ms.flow.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/release-notes/#known-issues-and-resolutions There were a few questions about Flow during the meeting that I wanted to make sure I followed-up with – the list of questions & my answers are below: Can Microsoft Flow monitor list item changes while the Flow is running – meaning can another Flow instance start if a user updates a list item while the Flow is already running. It is my understanding that if the Flow is currently running on a list item, another instance of the Flow will not start when a trigger occurs. Is there a trigger in Microsoft Flow for item deletes? No, just like SharePoint Designer workflows, there currently isn't a way to detect item deletes. Is there a particular patch level for SharePoint 2013 that is required for Microsoft Flow to connect? I haven't seen documentation noting a specific service pack or patch-level that is needed, but I will ask Microsoft for clarification and post the answer here.

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New Simple Approval Flows In SharePoint Libraries

Daniel — Tue, 16 May 2017 17:41:38 +0000

Microsoft announced today the newest improvement in workflow for the SharePoint platform – easy-to-use approval workflows built-in that will enable you to route a document for approval and give you the ability to give a custom message. In my workflow presentations, I talk about having a simple approval workflow being a great first step but we need a better user experience than what we have been given out-of-the-box with SharePoint in the past. We need the user to be able to approve/deny directly within their email client, without having to go to a SharePoint page, edit the task, complete the task, and then save it. Too many steps!! With this new functionality using Microsoft Flow, we will now be able to ad-hoc route documents for approval and approval participant will have a one-step action link in their email. Make sure you check out the new Microsoft Mechanics video “Zero code business process apps in SharePoint with PowerApps and Microsoft Flow” showing this and other improvements to the SharePoint experience.

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Creating & Upgrading SharePoint Workflows – April 9th 2017

Daniel — Tue, 02 May 2017 22:36:42 +0000

I am excited to be speaking once again at the Nashville SharePoint Users Group. The meeting on May 9th 2017 is in-person and via online meeting and the topic is “Creating & Upgrading SharePoint Workflows”. The details of my presentation are below. For a long time, we have used workflow for automating business processes in every version of SharePoint, while using various tools to create them: out of the box workflows, SharePoint Designer, Visual Studio, & third-party applications like Nintex and K2. Now that SharePoint Designer will no longer updated and there is a push to move to the cloud, what are we supposed to do now to automate tasks and business workflow? What if you aren't moving to Office 365 and just want to know what tool you should use to create workflows moving forward? Should you migrate your existing SharePoint Designer workflows to Microsoft Flow or a third-party tool? What would that process look like? Should you continue to build workflows using SharePoint Designer in SharePoint 2010, 2013, 2016?In our time together, we will review those questions and more so you can be confident in your path forward with process automation, no matter what version of SharePoint you are using or where it is hosted! [UPDATE] I had a great time with the group tonight. There were some great conversation concerning the gaps between SharePoint Designer workflows and Microsoft Flow. Everyone stay tuned to this space and make sure you register for the May 16th Microsoft Virtual Summit. Learning about @SharePoint workflows from @DanielGlenn at @NashvilleSUG #GoCubsGo pic.twitter.com/IUhZ7A8aaL — Michael Hewitt (@mdhewitt83) May 9, 2017

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SharePoint 2010 Workflows on a SharePoint 2016 Farm

Daniel — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 22:09:53 +0000

[This is a quick post – it will be updated with more information soon] During a recent client meeting, I was asked if SharePoint 2010 version workflows, developed on a SharePoint Server 2013 farm, will continue to work if the server farm is upgraded to 2016. SharePoint Server 2016 has not been released at the time of this writing, but we do have the Release Candidate to test with, so I went about testing. On a SharePoint Server 2013 farm (version 15.0.4719.1002, which is SP1 with May 2015 CU) I created a SharePoint 2010 version workflow and associated it with a document library. I took a SQL backup of the content database and restored it as a database named Site_SP13_to_SP16RC. On the SharePoint Server 2016 Release Candidate (RC) machine, I ran the Test-SPContentDatabase PowerShell cmdlet to check the database for any issues that might be encountered during the upgrade. The cmdlet ended without even a peep – which is a good sign. So, I performed the upgrade and it ran without error. I loaded the newly upgraded site and was greeted by an old friend… …and he (Working on it) stayed a while. It took several minutes for my simple team site to become available. The website loaded and it was ‘wonderful' ha! (see site name). The workflow I created on the SharePoint 2013 farm is configured to kickoff when the document is modified or a new document is added. So, I simply changed the title of the Test document that was already in the library. The workflow successfully started and did assign a task as it should. However, I noticed something on the workflows screen for the document – within the Completed Workflows section, the history of the workflow when it ran on the 2013 farm was listed. This isn't a huge surprise, but it is really nice to see that the history is there after upgrading! In summary, a SharePoint 2010 workflow (a very simple one in this case) created on a SharePoint Server 2013 site, will continue to work when upgraded to a SharePoint 2016 RC farm via database attach.

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