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What's New: Workflow Enhancements

Applies to: SharePoint Foundation 2010

In Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, the Windows Workflow Foundation provided a highly extensible workflow model to the SharePoint platform. Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 continues to build upon the functionality available in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and improves and expands your options so that you can build rich workflows that can accommodate even more complex business scenarios. This topic presents the new features that are available for workflows in SharePoint Foundation 2010.

New Features

The following is a list of the improvements and additions that have been added to the new product version.

New Workflow Activities

New workflow actions are built into the core installation of SharePoint Foundation. Workflow activities (also known as actions) are the building blocks of all workflows, and the addition of new activities gives you greater flexibility in your workflow design.

New Workflow Activities for SharePoint Foundation

Pluggable Workflow Services

Pluggable workflow services are now available that allow you to create workflows that interact and receive data from external sources.

Pluggable Workflow Services

Workflow Events

Workflows in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 were built to respond to a limited number of events. In SharePoint Foundation, workflows can interact with even more events. SharePoint Foundation also gives you the ability to create your own custom events and event receivers.

New Workflow Events

Site Workflows

New site workflows break the dependency that Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 workflows had on list items. Site workflows now allow you to develop workflows that can be associated with specified events and other workflow activities.

Site Workflows

Reusable Declarative Workflows

In the previous version, workflows were associated only with a specified list or document library and could not be packaged and deployed or copied to other lists or document libraries. In SharePoint Foundation, declarative workflows are reusable, which allows you to apply your workflow development efforts for one list to multiple places.