Creating a Workflow on a List using SharePoint Designer 2010

using SharePoint designer 2010 you can easily automate your business processes by creating workflows now there's some extremely powerful type of workflows you can create using this environment because of the awesome facilities that are available to you so I'll be showing you in this video how you can create a list workflow and then while doing that I'll be explaining the workflow designer environment and how you can take advantage of it to its fullest capability I'll be making my workflow on this site called sales so first let me go ahead and go to SharePoint designer and show you that we are at the sales site in SharePoint designer so I'm going to click on workflows first the workflows section and the navigation pane shows me any different workflows which are available to me first thing to note is that there are three out-of-the-box globally reusable workflows that you can start using right away approval collect feedback and collect signatures and then you can make new types of workflows list workflows which you can use to attach to any list and asking to be the focus of this video you can also make reusable workflows which you can attach to a content type and then use that content type within other lists and libraries and you can use a site workflows site workflows don't have to be attached to a list or library at all they can just be attached to a site and they'll execute on the site's properties itself so in our case we're going to attach our workflow to a list I'm gonna click on list workflow it shows me all the different lists which are which came out of the box with the team site when I created this team site also any of the other custom lists if I created them for example I do have one custom list here called customers and I can attach the workflow to that as well if I wish in my case though I'm going to attach my workflow to the calendar list so I'll click on calendar my workflow name is going to be process events basically when the events are generated in the calendar I'm going to be looking at the category of events and depending on the category I'll be taking certain actions now the first thing that I want to do right now is I want to set the workflow status to just starting I'll be putting that action the setting workflow status action within this step step one here's my action button up top in the ribbon there's all different actions that I've available to me the one that I want to look for is set workflow status which is right here the underlined part is the one that I can configure so I'll click on this it says that there are three different options that I have cancelled approved or reject it at three different types of status I can set for the workflow but you're not limited that if you do want you can make your own workflow status here that's what I'm going to do right now I'll just type in starting so keep it in mind that this is not just a job down list but it's actually a combination drop-down meaning you can type text in your own word or words or you can pick from the existing options all right so that's my first thing setting the workflow status for this item to starting right below that I'm going to send I'm going to put an action here to send an email what I want to do here is that every time a new calendar item is created I want to send an email to all the members of the site telling them that hey a new item has been created in the in the calendar please take note so that's going to be sent an email action now I can go ahead and go click on action again and look for send an email or I can click on or I can actually start typing some words which are in the action for example in this case email now when I typed an email it says press ENTER to insert send an email because that's the only action that is available which has a word email in there I'll press ENTER on my keyboard here we go and showing me send email to these users click on these users now and I need to configure this composition window for my email for the two here what I want to do as I mentioned before is send an email to all the members of the site so I'll choose the address book icon and look for the wingtip intranet members of the site add that to selected users all done for the subject line what I want is I wanted to say the new event created and then - and then the actual title of the event so for that I'm going to use this clip size button here which gives me a stringbuilder box I'll type in here new event created - and then I'm going to have a dynamic value being pulled in so I'll click on the add or change lookup and for the current item the current calendar item I'm going to put or pull its title here we go okay so the current item title is going to be placed right here and that's going to be part of the subject line alright and now for the body of this email I'll type in new event has been created please take note and then I'll have the dynamic value here showing the actual URL to this new event that's been created to put the URL right here you need to do add or change lookup and for the datasource current item which is the current calendar item because that's what we're attached to the calendar list I'm going to look for the encoded absolute URL field this returns the URL for the item now because this is a rich text box I can take information for example I can take this word event change the font I can change the font size here make it bold italicize underline change the color all that I want to do I can do here in this rich text box and when this email gets sent out it's going to be automatically of type HTML in addition I can also link up words so use this link button if I wanted to link up any of these words in this email okay I'm done here so I'm gonna click on OK now what I want to do is create a conditional statement so I'll go right below the then email and because I want to make a condition I'll have to click on the condition button here's all different conditions that are available to me the one that I want is if current item filled so if the item in the calendar if if there's a certain item field and it equals a certain value then do something basically click on that first thing I need to put is which field am i interested in well there's a category field and calendar item so I'll pick that if it equals a certain value now because there are certain predefined values for categories it lets me pick from that list I'm going to choose holiday so the category of this new event being created is holiday do something that do something in this case is going to be go ahead and create a new announcement in the announcements list and the new announcement is going to have the title of of this calendar event meaning it's going to tell everybody that here is a holiday coming up for example that's the announcement so I'm going to start typing in saying create now because I typed in the word create it's telling me that there are three results you can click on you can press ENTER again or you can click right here and it gives you a list to choose from create list item created by a specific person or created in a specific date span now I want the create list item now click on this list the create new list item dialog box asks me which list you want to create a new list item in for me it's going to be announcements the title column the title field in announcements is already a required field so that's why the asterisk is there I have to fill in this field with some value so I'm going to choose this field and click on modify to assign it some value the value for the new announcement is actually going to be title for the calendar item so I'll click on this ellipsis button actually I'll click on the function sorry about that click on the FX button here and here I'm going to choose that the data source is going to be current item which once again signifies the calendar and the field in calendar item is going to be the title field here we go okay and okay so the title of the new announcement it's going to be filled in with the title of the calendar item one more thing I want to add here so add I'll fill up the body field of the announcement with the description field of the calendar item all set and that's going to be my new list item in announcements list click on OK now I'm going to create the rest of this conditional statement here if the current category equals holiday do this and I'll choose an else statement here as well so I'm going to put my cursor right below that and click on the else if branch up above it makes a new else branch and here I need to put in a condition so condition if current item field equals value field once again it's going to be category value this time is going to be business now I want to assign a task to a person if the category is business so here I'm going to click on action and say assign a to-do item the to-do item in this case is going to be click on next here for the custom task wizard that opened up book meeting room finish so that's my new task that's going to get assigned to somebody or some people I'll click on these users and I'll click on the people groups from SharePoint site option here and when I click on add it's going to let me go ahead and pick from any user in my site click on add here and I want to search for a user her name is Janice here we go Janice galavan I'll add her click ok so now she's been added to selected users I could have more users or groups if I wanted to to assign a task to click ok here we go we're done with this once the workflow gets to this point what I want is I want it to end up by setting the workflow status to completed so once again I'll type in here set workflow click I'll click on enter here my keyboard and here we go set workflow status in this case I'm going to assign it a new value but before I assign it a new value let me show you that in the drop-down the other value that I put in before that starting value is now there in the drop-down list what I want to put in here is completed ok said workflow status to complete it now it is always good to name your steps something specific instead of just having it be name step 1 step 2 etc so I'm going to click on the step 1 here and type in and process items all right in addition you can also have multiple steps of course within a workflow so if I want to create a step here I can go ahead and click on step or I can go down here and click on the stub button here so I'll go to the top here click on the step button in the ribbon and this new step here is going to be just called starting what I really want is this action and this action here to be moved to the starting step now moving these two actions here this one this one to here is not just dragging them there the dragging does not work when they work for designer environment but the next best thing is available and that is click on the one that you want to move and use the move up or move down button in the ribbon so I'll click on move up here we go this as well move up and now these two two actions have been moved to the starting step so very easy to move actions around within a step or from step to another step one last thing that I want to show you about this workflow designer environment is the ability to create something called a parallel block notice that right now the first action will run and then the second action will run right after that that's why the word then is there if I wanted to run these two actions in parallel then what I do is go up top here and click on parallel block to add the parallel block here whatever actions I put or conditions I put in this parallel block will run in parallel so I'll use my move up button to move this action within the parallel block same thing here now it will execute both of these actions at one time instead of waiting for the first one to finish before it does the second one and that's what you can see by the word and instead of then okay so I'm all set my workflow is done I if I'm not ready to publish this if I don't want this to be available to my site yeah just wanted to keep it in draft mode for example I can click on save or if I am ready I can go ahead and click on publish and publish we'll save it and then publish the workflow to the site and specifically to this calendar list I'll go ahead and click on publish it validates it saves it of course and then goes out and publishes out also it creates any necessary forms that are needed any necessary settings that need to be put in to the environment it goes to does that now one thing that I've not done and I'm going to show you how to do this right now is make it so this workflow starts automatically every time a new calendar item is created and you can do that by clicking on the workflow Settings button and choosing the start workflow automatically when a new item is created or when an item is created now go ahead and republish this so this time around every time I go to calendar make a new event automatically this workflow is going to get executed I'll go to my site go to the calendar list and I know that in on May 31st is going to be Memorial Day so I'll go to May 31st and add a new item new calendar item right here so my new calendar item the title here is going to be Memorial Day and it's going to be an all-day event so I'll click on this check box to make an all-day event information here is going to be just our offices will be closed now here's the most important part since I'm checking for category in my workflow I want to set this category to holiday okay all set and click on the Save button here and at this point in time if this workflow has worked like it's supposed to then as the workflow designer environment let me click on edit workflow here to show you the workflow if it is Holliday and if it catches that it should make an announcement in the announcements list let's see if it did that I'll go to all site content in my sale site click on announcements list here's a new announcement it says Memorial Day for the title of the announcement because that's the title of the calendar item and if you click on it you see that the body of the announcement now is filled up with the description of the calendar item wonderful let's run run another test going back to calendar here I'm going to add a new event here it's going to be called board meeting and it's going to be category business let's go ahead and save this so let's see what should have happened if I go to workflow designer again here in SharePoint designer it says that it should assign a new task called book meeting room to Janice alright if I check the status of this workflow currently by clicking on this board meeting link and clicking on this workflows it shows me that the workflow status currently is starting now I'll go to the tasks list in the site and here's my new task assigned to Janice Galvan book meeting room so I'll go ahead and quickly sign in as Janice and while sign is signed in as Janice I'm going to click on the book meeting rooms task and say complete this task all right let's sign back in as the administrator and let's see that in the calendar list if I click on the board meeting now what is my workflow status here we go the workflow status for process events workflow is now completed and that's what we expected so this is how you can make a list workflow and attach it to any lists or libraries in your site also remember as I mentioned before that you can also create reusable workflows and attach them to content types then you can use those content types when different lists and libraries and there's another type of workflow called site workflow you want to look at that as well because then you can execute actions on its site and not specific to a list or library

Channel: VisualSP

Views: 46,391

Rating: 4.8571429 out of 5

Keywords: SharePoint, SharePoint Workflow

Id: jNpFbFCGyZo

Length: 19min 58sec (1198 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 01 2016