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Introduction toWindows Workflow FoundationIntroduction toWindows Workflow Foundation

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 Agenda Agenda

What is Windows Workflow Foundation?

 Architecture & Core concepts

Building Workflows

Building ActivitiesWorkflow Styles

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What is a workflow?What is a workflow?

 A set of activities that coordinate peopleand / or software...

EscalateToManager Example activities«. CheckInventory

Like a flowchart«.

«organized into some form of workflow.

Or a state diagram«.

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Windows Workflow FoundationWindows Workflow Foundation

K ey Concepts

Host Process

Wi

Wor flow Foundation

Runtime Engine

 A Workflow

 An Activity

Runtime Services

Base Activity Library

Custom Activity Libr ary

Visual Designer 

 Visual Designer: Graphical and code-based

construction

Workflows are a set of Activities

Workflows run within a Host Process: anyapplication or server

Developers can build their own Custom Activity Libraries

Components

Base  Activity Library: Out-of-box activities

and base for custom activities

Runtime Engine: Workflow execution and

state management Runtime Services: Hosting flexibility and

communication

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 Availability & Packaging

Thir f ti l .NET 3.0 t chnology f or Vist Windows  ommuni ation Foundation (³Indi o´)

Windows Pr  sentation Foundation (³ alon´)

Windows Wor 

flow Foundation (³Win E/WinWS´)

ort f or indows X indows r r 2003ic ns d s rt of indows

R l s c ndidat  availabl nowRTW 2 2006

20072005 2006

Final feature

milestone

V1

RTMB1 B2

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q1 Q2Q4

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What are  Activities?What are  Activities?

 An activity is a step in a workflowHas properties and events that are programmable within your workflow code

Has methods (e.g. Execute) that are only invoked by the workflowruntime

Think of Forms & Controls Activity == Controls

Workflows == orms

 Activities fall under two broad categoriesBasic ± steps that ³do work´

Composite ± manage a set of child activities

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 Activities:  An Extensible  Approach Activities:  An Extensible  Approach

OOB activities,workflow types,base types

General-purpose Activity libraries define workflowconstructs

Create/Extend/Compose activities App-specificbuilding blocks

irst-class citizens

Base Activity

Library

Custom Activity

Libraries

Author new

activity

Out-of-Box

 Activities

Extend

activityCompose

activities

Vertical-specificactivities & workflows

Best-practice I &Knowledge

Domain-Specific

Workflow Packages

Compliance

RosettaNet

CRM

IT Mgmt

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Workflow  Authoring ToolsWorkflow  Authoring Tools

Line of Business Manager / nd usersWizards

Business Analyst Visio Like

Script Developers or A sScript Like

Code Developers or IS sWindows Workflow oundation Designer 

Commonality between Tools:Support a common object model for describing Workflow

information

The object model needs to be exchangeable between tools

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