Introduction

• Workflow application architecture
• .NET versions and workflow

Workflow Fundamentals

Components of workflow applications

• WF programming model
• Workflow Runtime
• WF hosting
• Base activity library
• Sequential vs. state machine workflows
• XAML vs. code workflows

Integrating with Visual Studio

• Exploiting WF design-time features
• Composing workflows with the Workflow Designer
• Implementing WF application code
• Debugging workflows

Coding custom activities

• Modelling discrete business processes
• Harnessing the activity execution model
• Developing dependency properties
• Linking activities through activity binding

Hosting the WF Runtime

Windows Forms

• Creating the WF runtime in the host application
• Handling workflow runtime events
• Marshalling workflow events onto the UI thread

ASP.NET

• Exposing the WF runtime globally
• Supporting multiple active users
• Taking control of scheduling to maximise efficiency

Implementing Workflow Logic

Applying conditional logic to a workflow

• Making decisions with IfElse
• Looping with While
• Crafting code and declarative rule conditions
• Executing parallel tasks
• Invoking WCF services from a workflow

Handling errors and cancellation

• Detecting faults in workflows
• Suspending workflows in transient failure
• Restoring workflow state with cancellation

Communicating Between Workflow and Host

Designing for the local communication service

• Mapping workflow data exchange into an interface
• Modelling host-to-workflow events
• Designing workflow-to-host methods
• Creating a service implementation

Event-driven workflows

• Listening for host messages
• Handling external events
• Calling external methods

Managing the workflow data life cycle

• Providing data to a workflow on startup
• Extracting data from a completed workflow

Activating the application

• Creating the external data exchange service
• Raising events into the workflow
• Responding to workflow notifications

Designing State Machine Workflows

Modelling nonlinear business processes

• Supporting process backtracking
• Navigating between states
• Determining allowable transitions

Employing state machine activities

• Initialising and finalising state data
• Moving to new states with SetState
• Tracking state history

Persisting and Tracking Workflows

Saving long-running workflows

• Engaging SQL Server persistence
• Passivating and reconstituting workflows

Modelling in-flight workflows with tracking

• Establishing workflow tracking services
• Coding with the tracking API

Integrating WF and WCF

• Creating a WCF service interface
• Communicating with the Send and Receive activities
• Exploiting the WorkflowServiceHost