InfoPath Forms 2013

Introduction

InfoPath is designed to make it easy to build rich forms-based applications on the Microsoft SharePoint Server platform. Microsoft InfoPath 2013 in conjunction with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 and InfoPath Forms Services has many features for developers. InfoPath Forms Services, which is available in SharePoint Server 2013, enables you to deploy an InfoPath form template to a SharePoint Server so that users without the InfoPath rich client can open and fill out InfoPath forms in a Web browser.

New Features

• SharePoint Sandboxed Solutions
• Publish Forms with One Click
• Enhance SharePoint List Forms
• Host Forms on Portal Pages using the InfoPath Form Web Part
• Richer Web Forms
• Standards Compliant Browser Forms

New Controls

The feature gap between client and browser forms has been narrowed, creating a more consistent form filling experience for all users. Controls and functionality that are now supported in browser forms include the following:

• Bulleted, numbered, and plain lists
• Multiple selection list boxes
• Combo boxes
• Picture buttons
• Hyperlink capabilities
• Choice group and section
• Date and time controls
• Person/group pickers
• Filtering functionality

Write and Edit Code using Visual Studio

The Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Applications IDE that was integrated with InfoPath 2010 has been removed in InfoPath 2013. To write or edit form code in InfoPath 2013 now requires Visual Studio 2012 with the Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Applications 2012 add-on installed. The programming experience itself has not fundamentally changed, but you can now use the full Visual Studio development experience when writing managed code for your InfoPath forms.

Create a simple InfoPath form

Open the InfoPath Designer:

Double click the SharePointFormLibrary:

After that, we need to create a group:

Enter the name of the group and select the Type as ‘Group’:

Here we are entering some fields in that group:

Select the field’s data type:

We entered four more fields:

Drag and drop all the fields to the form tables:

Create a repeatable table:
Here we are creating “EducationalInfo ”as Repeating Table:

Now the form shows like:

Publishing the InfoPath form to the SharePoint Library:

Before publishing the form, we need to save that from:

After saving the form publishing wizard will open and here we need to enter the site URL:

Here, we uncheck the option “Enable this form to be filled out by using a browser” (This part I will explain later in Part 2):

Here we are creating a new library:

Enter the name of the new Library:

Here we need to select group:

Inside the group, we need to select the fields:

Now it’s verifying the form information and then click publish:

The form published successfully:

Refresh the site and add new document:

Now the InfoPath forms open and we can insert some values:

In the repeatable table, we have some option which is shown in the figure:

Click on the save button its values directly saving in the SharePoint Library:

Refresh the site and it shows the data:

Summary

In Part 1 of this article, we have explored how to create a simple InfoPath forms and how to publish into SharePoint site.

Train SharePoint Users within SharePoint sites

Training SharePoint Users within SharePoint sites

In my many years of training people, I realize that it’s much easier for users (especially end users, but others as well) to consume training when they are already within a familiar environment. SharePoint has become that familiar environment for many knowledge workers around the world now so why not provide the training they need directly within that environment.

Content of Training

Any training content that can be packaged up in video tutorials, documents and reference images can be served to users within a SharePoint site that they frequently visit. Example of these subjects areas are:

• Onboarding new employees
• Safety and regulation requirements
• Vendor management process
• Call center operation procedures
• Branding guidelines

The above are just a few of many processes that companies often wish to train users in.

Challenge

How do you expose the same training modules to your marketing department folks that the human resources department is using?
That’s a common problem. If you just simply copy and paste the links to resources, it’s not dynamic anymore. What if the main list of resources change? Now your lists are not dynamic anymore. Not cool.

Solution

How about having all variety of your training content defined in one location farm-wide and then just simply dropping a web part on a page where you wish to see some particular content?
So for example, you define the metadata for each piece of training content (title, description, location to where it’s located, etc.) all in one central location grouped by the type of training it is: Onboarding, Vendor Management, Branding, and so on. Now, when a site collection administrator or even a site owner wants to show any of these training modules, they can do so on any of the pages they want by simply inserting a web part on that page and defining one parameter which tells it which type of training to show. Just by doing that, the web part will now show the dynamic links to the relevant training content. Something like the following image shows –

This feature is part of the VisualSP^TM Help System. The VisualSP^TM web part can be placed on any page to accomplish this goal. All content is live and changes to it can be controlled at the farm, web application and site collection level as needed.
Check out the following short video to see what I mean.

After 13 years…Why do End Users Still Struggle with SharePoint?

Clark Buckner talks with Asif Rehmani to discuss a bit more about why people still struggle w/ understanding the SharePoint software since its inception in 2001.

Listen to Full Interview

Rehmani explains that 13 years have passed since this product was first introduced, and even with the lack of adoption from end users…SharePoint still thrives. Why?  1. It’s a great platform that users can do so much with.  2. there’s nothing else like this in the world.
Why do End Users Struggle?

• SharePoint is different that anything else Microsoft has introduced
• it has a different interface (so it’s not intuitive)
• it requires some understanding of navigation & processes

Once users get it, SharePoint will likely make their job easier and allow them to be more productive.
It’s the initial understanding that becomes the hurdle…once organizations can get the user to the next level of understanding, they can start really using it more effectively.
Overcoming that hurdle requires training. Asif & Clark discuss a bit about how training has evolved in the last 13 years.

How to Effectively Train
An important consideration, Rehmani explains, is the the end users are not SharePoint experts. They have their own “regular” job (i.e. dentist, para legal, etc.)
End users use SharePoint just as they would use Word, Excel, etc. It takes getting used to.  And, just like excel (i.e. learning how to use macros, pivot tables, and other advanced features) – users have to take initiative to learn “more”.

Trying to show end users how SharePoint works from beginning to end, does NOT work
The users will forget what they learned! What users tend to do instead is they “search” for help when they need it without overwhelming them with too much information!
What SPVideos has done is try to understand what end users need while they are working within each different areas of SharePoint. The next step was to provide support.
– SPVideos started out by offering short SharePoint training videos on the website, giving end users access to quick tutorials on the specific subject they are struggling with.
– Now there is also a solution which attaches directly w/in the environment that users working in. They don’t need to step-out of SharePoint to get the info they need.
This solution (called VisualSP) manifests as a help tab w/in the SharePoint ribbon. For example, if an end user is creating a document and is having trouble sharing that document, they will find a short video (or tip sheet) right there in the help tab of the ribbon.
The goal is to make them feel empowered…to have them say “i can do this” – rather than feeling frustrated when they can’t find the help they need.

Finally, the No-Code Sharepoint Solution You’ve Been Dreaming Of

If you’ve ever asked yourself, “How can you as a SharePoint power-user, or even as a developer, make some really powerful solutions without the use of programming or coding?” Then you’re luck. Asif Rehmani, VisualSP founder and CEO, has been teaching on these topics for many years. At the 2015 SPTechCon in Austin this February, Rehmani will present two sessions related to no-code development in SharePoint.

• 8:30 – 9:45 am: “Create Powerful No-Code SharePoint Designer 2013 Workflows in Office 365 and On-Premise”
• 12:00 – 1:15 pm: “No-Code Solution Creation Options for Non-Developers in SharePoint 2013”

SharePoint is such a robust program capable of solving many different kinds of problems— which has both benefits and a drawbacks. Power users and SharePoint developers appreciate the program’s wide capabilities, but typical users may be daunted by the options presented to them.
SharePoint for Non-Programmers
That’s where Rehmani’s presentations come in. He understands that not all SharePoint users are developers or know how to code. But, as a SharePoint Server MVP, he knows that SharePoint can solve many business problems, even without knowing how to code. So long as an end user grasps the basic building blocks of SharePoint, “those building blocks can be put together nicely without extreme programming or Visual Studio, to make some really powerful solutions for your group, for your team, for yourself.”
Rehmani and his team want to ensure that SharePoint becomes and remains a valuable investment for the businesses that choose to use it. For example, companies could use it to seamlessly integrate their marketing automation software with their CRM. But instead, too many businesses allow SharePoint to become “shelfware” because they’re too frustrated by its intricacies.
That’s why Rehmani’s company, VisualSP, provides “help system software which plugs into SharePoint,” among a number of other helpful products and resources. VisualSP will also have a booth presence at SPTechCon this year. Attendees are welcome to stop by learn more about the company’s offerings, take a demo of their SharePoint Help System (a one-of-a-kind platform that installs as a HelpTab directly in the SharePoint ribbon providing in-context, on-demand help for end users), and get their badge scanned for a chance to win great prizes (including a new HDTV). Beyond that, interested parties are encouraged to learn more about the ways that their company (formerly known as SharePoint Videos) “empowers, educates, supports, and trains” a wide variety of SharePoint users.

What’s new—Office 365 Video

Office 365 Video provides you a single tool for uploading, sharing and playing back videos anywhere on your company intranet—whether you use SharePoint Online and/or SharePoint Server on-premises.

“It was difficult to find information in our original intranet. The Office 365 Video and Office Delve tools make it easy for our employees to reach into the firm and bring all our intellectual resources to bear on finding creative ways to solve problems. These tools are exactly what our employees are asking for.”
—Deborah Youmans, senior manager of Collaboration Development at Booz Allen. See their full case study and video.

As you may have seen on the Office 365 Roadmap, we’ve been working hard to bring you numerous features and capabilities ranging from improving the upload experience, enhancing accessibility with closed-caption support, delivering analytics per video to provide aggregate trending patterns and more.
Watch the new Microsoft Mechanics video to see highlights of the new innovations—rolling out now.

Video viewer statistics

The new video viewer statistics gives people insights into how their videos are being viewed—highlighting viewing spikes where shared via email and Yammer or discovered within Office Delve. It shows aggregate data on how many people have watched your video and how long they spend watching it, visualizing the drop-off rates over time.

Users can view interactive Viewer trends and Viewer engagement graphs from the Statistics drop-down menu underneath a video on its playback page.

Learn more about viewing statistics for a video in Office 365 Video.

Improved upload experience and capabilities

We are now rolling out an easier, more centralized way to upload videos. Start by clicking the universal Upload button in the top-left navigation and then selecting the desired channel for your video(s) from the list of channels you have upload rights to. Select or drag and drop videos to begin upload. During the upload, you will see an overall progress bar if you’re uploading multiple videos, plus individual progress bars per video. While this is happening, you can type the title and description details. Now that was easy and a time saver.

Easily upload videos, adjust and add title and description and see progress along the way.

Learn more about uploading videos into Office 365 Video.
Upload your own subtitle files—After the upload is complete, you can make your internal video communications more accessible. Office 365 Video supports the common webvtt format for subtitles, with the ability to have subtitles in multiple languages per video. You simply choose the language and upload the captions file. The Office 365 Video player then associates the captions when the viewer turns captioning on.

Upload one or many webvtt caption format files to add closed captions to your videos.

Viewers can then select their preferred language during playback from within the Office 365 Video player.

Learn more about adding subtitles or captions to a video.
Choose your own thumbnail—Once a video is in the system, you have the ability to choose the thumbnail. Options include selecting one of the four auto-generated thumbnails, uploading your own custom image or using the default thumbnail. The selected thumbnail image represents the video throughout Office 365—including in the Office Delve activity feed, when embedded on a SharePoint team site (on-premises and online) or when placed within an internal blog post.

Easily manage choosing your own thumbnail for video(s) you have uploaded.

Learn more about changing a thumbnail for a video.
Owner and people metadata—Beyond title and description, Office 365 Video also shows who uploaded the video and the various people who are in the video. This enhances the discoverability of the video and highlights the main speakers; it, too, enhances when and how your videos appear in other users’ Delve activity feeds pivoting off of the relevant context of who knows who.

You add people involved by doing a simple name lookup based on your active directory.

Easily insert a video into a SharePoint page or team site—We want to save you clicks when you choose to broaden your video communications throughout your intranet. So, now it is easier than ever to embed a video—managed from within Office 365 Video—into a SharePoint Online page or team site. There is now an Office 365 Video button on the Insert ribbon tab to display a dialog box where you can quickly search for and select a video from your Office 365 Video portal.

Click the Office 365 Video button from the Insert ribbon menu when editing a SharePoint Online team site.

Read more about the value of embedding video throughout your intranet. And then learn more about how to embed a video into a SharePoint team site from Office 365 Video.

New admin controls and management capabilities

Download for offline viewing—Stay informed and up to date even when you are not connected to the Internet. Office 365 Video enables the ability to download the file to your local machine or easily transfer to your smaller device for times when you need to view a video offline or to show a video in a location without Internet access. Channel admins can control who is able to download videos based on the same permissions for the channels (owners, editors and viewers).

Once enabled, viewers can take a copy of the video for offline playback by clicking the Download button directly under the player on the player page.

Learn more about how to set download permissions within the channel permissions settings.
Yammer settings per channel—Video channel owners in organizations that have Yammer enabled can now control the default Yammer group that video comments are posted to or disable Yammer comments altogether for a channel.

The new Yammer control tab, within Channel Settings, gives channel owners flexibility to turn Yammer conversations on or off or to have comments posted to a specific Yammer group.

Learn more how to manage and control Yammer settings per channel.
Restore a video in the Recycle Bin—Admins can now restore videos that have been deleted by a user. Deleted videos sit in the Recycle Bin for 90 days, and it is now possible to recover and restore videos from the Recycle Bin. To restore a video in the Recycle Bin, simply select the video and click Recover Selection. The video is resubmitted into the system and prepped for playback.
Learn more about deleting and restoring videos from the video Recycle Bin.
Office 365 Video now deployed in U.S. Government zone (GCC) and China datacenters—Customers whose tenants are in the Government Community Cloud (GCC) and China datacenters now have Office 365 Video available to them for their dynamic, secure and private internal communications.

Moving forward and your feedback

Whoa, that’s a lot of new features and functionality to bring you the best, most integrated video solution within the Office 365 productivity experience and beyond (note: SharePoint Server 2016 (RTM) supports establishing a hybrid connection to Office 365 Video). And we’re already hard at work planning and developing the next round of innovation.
We’re always listening. If you have an idea for a future Office 365 Video feature, please visit our UserVoice page, submit your feedback and vote items up! Or join in the discussion about Office 365 Video with other organizations and the Microsoft team that builds it.

New to Office 365 in March—move from Evernote to OneNote, PowerPoint Designer updates and more

OneNote now helps you make the move from Evernote

Earlier this month, we released a tool that will help you import your Evernote notes into OneNote, and the response has been overwhelming. To date, more than 10.5 million Evernote pages have been moved over to OneNote. If these were stacked pages of standard print paper, it would reach a height of approximately 3,500 feet—which exceeds the Burj Khalifa (the tallest skyscraper in the world) by almost 800 feet. We believe this success has a lot to do with OneNote’s unique capabilities, including a free-form canvas where you can mix text, images, documents, handwriting, audio, video and more; free offline access; and unlimited monthly uploads. Download the OneNote Importer tool for Windows and get started today. We’ll deliver the Importer tool for Mac in the coming months.

The OneNote Importer tool makes it easy to migrate all of your Evernote content into OneNote.

Search in OneNote for handwriting in photos

OneNote already lets you search on handwritten notes made with a pen or finger and digital ink. Now OneNote can search on handwritten notes and whiteboards contained within images you’ve added to OneNote using Office Lens, as well other tools such as the OneNote Clipper, me@onenote.com and Livescribe. Soon we’ll also support handwriting recognition for images you add directly into OneNote on any device. These improved handwriting search capabilities help you get the most out of capturing information to collect and organize in OneNote.
image: https://officeblogseast.blob.core.windows.net/wp-content/2016/03/Office-365-March-1.png

Now you can search on handwritten notes that you scanned into OneNote using Office Lens and other tools.

Enhancing the power of PowerPoint Designer

Four months ago, we launched PowerPoint Designer, an intelligent new design assistant to help you create beautiful slides in seconds. As detailed in this PowerPoint blog, we’re excited to announce three new ways we’ve made Designer more powerful to enhance your PowerPoint experience and give you greater visual impact in less time.

• Multiple images—Until now, Designer could provide design recommendations when you inserted a single image into a PowerPoint slide. Now Designer can suggest designs for when you insert multiple images. You’ll see design suggestions for up to two images for all PowerPoint themes, and up to four images when using the specific Office and Gallery themes.

image: https://officeblogseast.blob.core.windows.net/wp-content/2016/03/Office-365-March-2b.png

Designer now provides design recommendations when you insert multiple images into PowerPoint.

• Color extractor—Designer now extrapolates the most prevalent color option from inserted images and applies that in a thoughtful way to your overall theme. This works with the new Gallery theme and will roll out to the other native PowerPoint themes in coming months.

• Facial recognition—Now Designer can recognize which images include faces and make intelligent cropping decisions to prioritize them when making design suggestions.

We’ll keep improving PowerPoint Designer based on what we learn from your feedback. Stay tuned for even more enhancements to Designer in the future, including design suggestions for additional elements such as bulleted text, data points, lists and more. Learn more about using Designer here.

New language support in Office for Mac and Skype Translator

There has been strong customer demand for right-to-left language support in Office 2016 for Mac. We are pleased to announce that Office 2016 for Mac now supports Arabic and Hebrew and provides right-to-left language support in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Outlook will follow within a month. Learn more about how to get started here.
image: https://officeblogseast.blob.core.windows.net/wp-content/2016/03/Office-365-March-3.png

Office 2016 for Mac now supports an Arabic and Hebrew fully mirrored interface.

Skype Translator also now supports Arabic. This means that even more people around the world can speak another language without learning it, helping to break down language and communications barriers in everyday life. Skype Translator now supports a total of eight spoken languages (Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazilian) and Spanish). More than 50 written languages (including Arabic) are also supported, so you can still text others around the world, even if you don’t speak the same language. Make sure you’ve downloaded the latest version of the Skype for Windows desktop app to get started!
image: https://officeblogseast.blob.core.windows.net/wp-content/2016/03/Office-365-March-4.png

Skype Translator now supports Arabic.

Expanding Skype for Business meetings experiences and voice services

Earlier this month, we announced a number of ways we are expanding the reach of Skype for Business meetings and voice services in Office 365. We’ve almost doubled the number of countries—now at 32 and counting—where customers can buy dial-in conferencing as part of their Office 365 subscription. This allows them to use Skype for Business Online for all of their meeting needs. Also, our PSTN conferencing service will expand to include local dial-in numbers in more than 60 countries by the end of March and nearly 100 countries by the end of June.
The new Cloud Connector Edition of Skype for Business Server will be generally available starting in April. All versions of Skype for Business Server allow customers to use Office 365 Cloud PBX with the carrier calling services of their choice. Now the new Cloud Connector Edition makes it even easier for customers to quickly connect existing phone lines and phone numbers to Office 365. Check out the blog for more details on these and other Skype for Business announcements!

Introducing Office 365 Project Portfolio Dashboard and Office 365 Video viewer statistics

We’re excited to announce that Office 365 Project Portfolio Dashboard will soon be available for commercial customers to add to Project Online through the Office Store! Customers will also be able to view these dashboards using a new iPad app. These apps come pre-configured with powerful dashboards that allow business leaders, portfolio managers and project managers to gain insights into areas such as resource utilization, project portfolio performance, costs, active risks/issues and key milestones.
image: https://officeblogseast.blob.core.windows.net/wp-content/2016/03/Office-365-March-5.png

Gain insights into project performance, resource utilization and more with Office 365 Project Portfolio Dashboard.

In addition, video viewer statistics have rolled out to Office 365 Video for our commercial customers. Gain insights on what’s working, how and when in your videos, by tracking how they are viewed and understanding trending patterns as they are shared by email, Yammer, or discovered within Office Delve. You can see aggregate data on how many people have watched your videos, how long they watch them and what the drop-off rates are over time. Learn more about viewing statistics for a video in Office 365 Video.
image: https://officeblogseast.blob.core.windows.net/wp-content/2016/03/Office-365-March-6.png

Office 365 Video analytics provides interactive Viewer trends and Viewer engagement graphs.

As always, learn more about what’s new this month here: Office 2016 and Office for Mac. If you’re an Office 365 Home or Personal customer, be sure to sign up for Office Insider builds to be the first to use the latest and greatest in Office productivity. Commercial customers on both Current Channel and Deferred Channel can also get early access to a fully supported build through First Release.

Read more at https://blogs.office.com/2016/03/24/new-to-office-365-in-march-move-from-evernote-to-onenote-powerpoint-designer-updates-and-more/#p5Jw33aidjUBxTVZ.99

Packaging SharePoint 2013 List, Site, and Reusable Workflow and How to Deploy the Package

In SharePoint Designer 2013 along with SharePoint Server 2013 and Azure Workflow Service, we now support all three workflow types – list workflow, site workflow, and reusable workflow. This is superb. This means you don’t have to confine yourself only to the reusable workflow and the old story that you had to migrate your list workflows to reusable workflows for this purpose are all now gone.
An example will help tell this story much better. I will build a sample workflow and show how it can be reused in a target site.

Example: a Vacation Request list workflow

Let’s say you are going to create a list workflow on a development environment. The workflow has two lists – Vacation list and Vacation Request list. Vacation list keeps the number of remaining vacations for all the employees and Vacation Request list is where the requestor will create a request item to request approval for vacation.

Create necessary lists (development environment)

As said, we need two lists so I created two lists as below. Note that we will use the default settings for the ‘Task List’ and ‘History List’.

Create list workflow on Vacation Request list

Now that you have the necessary lists ready, use SPD to connect to the server, click ‘List Workflow’, and then choose ‘Vacation Request’ list. You will be shown a dialog below and make sure you choose ‘SharePoint 2013 Workflow’ type after you type in the workflow name.

Fill in the logic and Publish the workflow

In the SPD canvas, you can choose text-based designer or if Visio Professional is installed you can choose the visual designer to author the workflow. In this blog, I will use the text-based designer but if you are interested in the visual designer, please refer to another blog post on the visual designer, which will be available soon.
Please add the following logic. In general, it is very straight-forward except for a couple points. It consists of five stages. Each stage’s title explains what it is for but to explain it in more detail, I’ve described them below:

• ‘Check if remaining vacation exists’ stage – fetch the remaining vacation days for the initiator and compare it to the requested vacation days
• ‘Approval Process’ stage – request approval for the requested vacation days
• ‘Approved’ stage – when approved, update the Vacation list with the new calculated value
• ‘Rejected’ stage – send rejection mail
• ‘insufficient vacation’ stage – send mail on the insufficient remaining vacation days

The tricky parts are these lookup UIs to fetch the remaining vacation days from Vacation list or to update the Vacation list.


You can opt to turn on ‘auto start by item creation’ option if it makes more sense.

And when you publish the workflow the workflow association will be created and the status column will be made behind the scenes.

Package the lists into STP packages

There are several ways by which you can guarantee that the target server has the necessary lists and schemas but leveraging STP package is a good practice. So let’s package Vacation list and Vacation Request list into a STP packages.
You can do this via either server UI or SPD UI as shown below.


Then, you will see the following screen where you can type in the name and choose to package the contents as well.

Note that SharePoint 2013 list workflow is not packaged together whether you choose to ‘Include Content’ or not.
And if successful, it will guide you to a place where you can download the package.

Click the link and download the package for later use.
If successful, you must have two STP packages now, one package for the Vacation Request list and another for the Vacations list (the list that contains the remaining vacation days).

Package the workflow into WSP package

To package the list workflow, go to the workflow summary page and click the ‘Save as Template’ button in the Ribbon.

The following dialog will be shown.

You can find ‘Site Assets’ library in the Navigation pane and you can find the list workflow package in it. (You may need to refresh the page to see the package.)
Use the ‘Export File’ Ribbon button to save it to the local machine.

Deploy the STP packages

Open the target site(or production environment) in your browser and go to ‘Site Settings’. You can find ‘List templates’ menu under ‘Web Designer Galleries’ group.

Using the ‘Upload Document’ under ‘Files’ menu, upload the two STP packages.

Create lists using the deployed list templates

You can create the two lists from the deployed list templates. Go to ‘Site Contents’ in the navigation menu in the server and click ‘add an app’. You should be able to find ‘Vacation’ and ‘Vacation Request’ icons.

Create ‘Vacation’ and ‘Vacation Request’ lists using those menus.

Deploy the WSP package and activate the package

Deploying WSP package is a bit different from deploying STP list templates. You must upload it to ‘Solutions’ library under ‘Web Designer Galleries’ group in Site Settings.

Then, you will be prompted with a dialog where you need to activate the package(solution).

Activate the Feature

After activating the solution, you will see there is a new site feature in ‘Manage site features’ under ‘Site Actions’ of Site Settings.

This is it. You can find this workflow by the name you used when you packaged it. Click the ‘Activate’ button and wait until the button changes to ‘Deactivate’ or the ‘Active’ icon is shown, which will mean that the feature is activated.

(Optional) Open the workflow from SPD

There are cases when you want to update the workflow in the target site. No problem. It is just the same as your development environment. You can find the deployed workflow correctly listed in SPD.

And it will open without any issues. You can see that the values in the summary page remain the same. And of course, the logic is preserved as well.

(Optional) Run the workflow

After you run the workflow from the server, you may find that there are two columns with the same name(workflow status column). This is a known issue. One column comes from the source server(packaged in STP) and the other column is created in the target site. Please update the list view to hide the old column.

What is the alternative to using STP package?

The solution will be properly deployed as long as the target site has the necessary lists – lists that are used in the workflow logic along with the Workflow Task and Workflow History lists. But it is best to create the lists and list columns referenced in the workflow using the same list template and same field type. If there is a type mismatch, the package can fail during the feature activation time or the workflow will fail at runtime.

What happens if the workflow package is deployed to a site where ‘Vacation’ or ‘Vacation Request’ lists don’t exist?

The site feature activation will fail.

The error message is not very detailed but if you look at the ULS log, you can find some hints like the following:
“Workflow XAML failed validation due to the following errors: Failed to create a ‘ListId’ from the text ‘$ListId:Lists/Vacation;”
But once the feature activation has failed, re-activation of the feature may fail again even after you create the necessary lists. This is because your workflow definition is deployed incompletely. You need to do the following:

• Open SPD and delete the workflow definition which failed during feature activation
• Deactivate the solution and remove the solution
• Upload the solution and activate the solution
• Activate the site feature

This should solve the problem.

Known Issues

These are the known issues of workflow package.

• You need to guarantee that the relative list urls (eg. ‘Lists/Vacation’) are the same. Even if you create a list with a given name and then change it to a different name, the list url will not change, this is because it is based on the original display name. As such, even though you packaged the workflow based on the list’s updated name, the workflow will still look for a list url based on the old name in the target site. Therefore, when you are recreating the lists in the target site, you must make sure that you initially give the lists the original name, and not the updated name. This way the list url will be preserved. After the list is created, you can change the list’s name to the updated one.
• Workflows with Unicode or DBCS names will be packaged into wsp files with the default hard-coded name of ‘WorkflowSolution.wsp’
• You need to manually refresh the page after you go to Site Assets to see the updated list of solutions.
• If the target server doesn’t have the Workflow Task list and Workflow History list, the below error can show up when you click on the workflow from the Workflow Settings page. This happens when you deploy the workflow to a target server where no workflows has ever been created before. As a workaround, you can create and publish a dummy workflow from SPD to create the Workflow Task list and Workflow History list. And then you can open the deployed workflow from SPD, adjust the Workflow Task list and Workflow History list settings and republish the workflow.
• Project workflow will be packaged like a regular site workflow. But to guarantee it works, you need to also package project entities such as EPT, Stages, custom columns, and so on. Please refer to the project workflow guideline which will be provided by the Project team.