Question

We have a rather large document routing framework that’s currently implemented in SharePoint (with a large set of cumbersome SP workflows), and it’s running into the edge of what SP can do easily. It’s slated for a rewrite into .NET

I’ve spent the past week or so reading and watching WF4 discussions and demonstrations to get an idea of WF4, because I think it’s the right solution. I’m having difficulty envisioning how the system will be configured, though, so I need guidance on a few points from people with experience:

• Let’s say I have an approval that has to be made on a document. When the wf starts, it’ll decide who should approve, and send that person an email notification. Inside the notification, the user would have an option to load an ASP.NET page to approve or reject. The workflow would then have to be resumed from the send email step. If I’m planning on running this as a WCF WF Service, how do I get back into the correct instance of the paused service? (considering I’ve configured AppFabric and persistence) I somewhat understand the idea of a correlation handle, but don’t think it’s meant for this case.

• Logging and auditing will be key for this system. I see the AppFabric makes event logs of this data, but I haven’t cracked the underlying database–is it simple to use for reporting, or should I create custom logging activities to put around my actions? From experience, which would you suggest?

Thanks for any guidance you can provide. I’m happy to give further examples if necessary.

Answer 1

To send messages to a specific workflow instance you need to set up message correlation between your different Receive activities. In order to do that you need some unique value as part of your message data.

The Appfabric logging works well but if you want to create custom a custom logging solution you don’t need to add activities to your workflow. Instead you create a custom TrackingParticipant to do the work for you. How you store the data is then up to you.