One of the top features and capabilities of SharePoint is to automate processes. Instead of having paper forms, or sending approval forms by email, everything is done through an automated SharePoint Workflow. SharePoint already comes with some built in workflows as well as three tools to create custom workflows. You have SharePoint Designer, which is aimed at power users and light modifications, the pretty new Napa tools which should be the middle between a good power user and a developer, and all the advanced stuff has to be done in Visual Studio.
SharePoint Designer is loved by power users, since it allows them to build pretty powerful SharePoint Workflows, without needing too many permissions to the server. However, even if SharePoint Designer can accomplish a lot, it's still limited in what it can do. SharePoint Workflows that are more complex, need a developer to code them in Visual Studio, and that delays the implementation of the workflow and increases the costs.
That is why VirtoSoftware created the SharePoint Workflow Activities Extensions Kit. Here is a description of the kit from the VirtoSoftware website.
Review
First, let's talk about what exactly are the SharePoint Workflow Activity Extensions. Workflow Activity extensions are extra activities that everyone that connects to your SharePoint site can do directly from SharePoint Designer. Those activities appear exactly as if they were out of the box SharePoint Designer activities. From an integration point of view, it's great since Power Users don't have to install anything on their computers for it to work, and they are already used to working with SharePoint Designer, so not a lot of training is needed. Here is a sample of the actions added by VirtoSoftware in SharePoint Designer.
One of the activity categories that seems really interesting is the Active Directory one. A lot of clients that I have been to, would really like to offload a lot of Network / System admin tasks, to Level 1 Help Desk, but they do not want to give the level 1 support people the permissions to do common tasks such as Password Reset, add a new user, Add a user to a security Group and etc. Since I am on a demo environment that I do not have access to Active directory, I am not able to test those, so let me show you other really easy actions that VirtoSoftware can do. First easy example, imagine you want to move a list item from a more private one, to a public one that is visible to all employees. I simply setup a SharePoint workflow that moves an item from a list to another one when the status is public and it worked perfectly.
Another use case for the "Copy Item" would be when you have a very big active list, for example a Change Approval Board item list, and sometimes the list grows over the 5000 recommended number for performance. You could setup a workflow that moves an item to the "Archived List" after it's done, and deletes the item in the current list. That way, you always have a clean main list. Furthermore, all the Created and Modified times are kept when copying items!
Another cool Item-level feature of Virto's SharePoint Workflows Kit is deleting permissions. Imagine you have a list, and once an item is "processed", you want it to stay there as a record, and no one to modify it. With the SharePoint Workflow activities, you can do that in three lines by using the "Delete Permissions" activity.
I could show you a lot of examples with the 230 activities, but it would add no value to the review. There seems to be actions for anything you would ever need, and I don't see how you could need an action that is not already there. But in case you do need something that is not there, you can either run your own custom C# / VB.Net code directly from SharePoint Designer, or you can request it on their website, and they will fulfill it within 3 business days!
Conclusion
SharePoint workflows are one of the big selling points of SharePoint as workflows allow for business to automate processes and save time and money. Most companies try to do as much as possible with SharePoint Designer since it's easy to use, and Power Users can create their own SharePoint Workflows, without the need of a developer. However, SharePoint Designer is pretty limited out of the box, and if you want to do something a bit more advanced, you need to go to code. With VirtoSoftware SharePoint Workflow Activities Extensions Kit, you add 230 actions in SharePoint Designer, that your users can use right away, without having to install anything on their computer.
Throughout my testing, I found the integration to be really smooth, and I loved how everything just worked. Since I am used to SharePoint Designer, I didn't even need to read their product manual or how to information to know how to use them. There are A LOT of activities, and even if when you look at some of them and you ask yourself "When would I ever use this?" you never know what the business will ask you and you might need them. It's better to have more than not enough!
If you want to try out the solution, VirtoSoftware is giving out free 30 days trial of fully functional.
Also VirtoSoftware offers 23 free SharePoint 2010 Workflow Platform activity and 10 free following SharePoint 2013 Workflow Platform activities for free:
- Get List Items
- Copy/Move Document
- Create List Item
- Update List Item
- Add/Remove folder
- Copy/Move Folder
- Copy/Move Attachments
- Get Attachments
- Waiting For Changes Fields
- Split String
If you are a company that wants to give more power to Power User to allow them to create their own workflows, directly from SharePoint Designer, without always needing a developer, I strongly recommend you check out the VirtoSoftware SharePoint Workflow Activities Extensions Kit. To learn more, visit the VirtoSoftware website by clicking the logo below:
by Vlad Catrinescu via Everyone's Blog Posts - SharePoint Community
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