Quickly Build and Manage Complex, Dynamic Workflows for SharePoint

            Cross the Chasm from Workflow to Enterprise BPM with AgilePoint

There is no doubt that SharePoint will soon become a key component of enterprise infrastructure for many organizations. The challenge for many is simply that SharePoint will only grow, so will your SharePoint workflows.

This means that organizations that have adopted or plan to adopt SharePoint will soon see steady increase in the number of deployed workflows, the number of running workflow instances, the number of change requests, and the number of exceptions. However, most workflow solutions targeting SharePoint in the marketplace today mainly focus on how to quickly and easily automate a workflow for SharePoint and provide inadequate governance, reporting, and in-flight process management capabilities.

Commonly seen challenges introduced by SharePoint workflow add-on solutions:

• While many vendors look to push the envelope of SharePoint Designer to enable business users to create workflows with no code, the ‘code-free’ promise breaks very quickly when the workflow requirements become more complex and dynamic. At such time, organizations have to resort back to a complete custom coding approach by IT.The ‘code-free’ empowerment for business users is not sustainable.
• They lack critical house-keeping services that govern the full lifecycle of workflow executions to keep you in control at all times.
• Most are built upon a code-based architecture and require you to turn a workflow into compiled code before execution. This inhibits the critical run-time in-flight management capabilities such as process migration, roll-back, dynamic re-route, dynamically instantiated approval, etc., that are indispensible for exception handling and supporting ad-hoc processes where the course of execution may not be pre-definable.
• Most of the current solutions require installation of proprietary code or databases on SharePoint Server which does not comply with Microsoft’s Gold-Level Customization Policy with the objective to keep SharePoint ‘clean’ for ease of support and upgrade. This means they are more likely to incur implications for IT support.
   

The above challenges are mainly due to the fact that most products are not built upon a robust, true BPMS platform with the goal to deliver sustainable business user empowerment enabled by seamless end-to-end business and IT collaboration. This is why according to a recent IDG survey, 62% of CIOs said that SharePoint was a critical component of their technology portfolio and BPM tops their list of primary areas for growth for SharePoint to address insufficient workflows and end-to-end business process management capabilities.

AgilePoint makes available the industry’s most advanced metadata-based, model-driven BPMS based on .NET  to the SharePoint space. AgilePoint provides the platform for organizations to easily create, manage, and govern complex workflows for SharePoint. AgilePoint features a highly visual, drag-and-drop composition environment integrated with Microsoft Visio, that not only makes building workflow for SharePoint quick and easy, now business users, IT, and your entire organization can effectively build and improve business processes.

This advancement makes it possible for IT to extend ‘code-free’ experience for business users to create more complex and dynamic workflows without having to reverting back to complete coding by IT for creating more complex workflow scenarios. 
 

• True model-driven for creating directly executable workflows in a Visio-based environment (no code-generation, no rigid compiled code, minimum to no burden on IT)
• SOA aligned architecture

• In-flight process modification and adaptation for maximum process agility
• Powerful Governance and Reporting – you are always in control of your processes
• Keeps SharePoint clean. No need to install any proprietary web services, windows services, etc. on SharePoint. Greatly eases support, maintenance, upgrade, etc. for IT

• Highly cost effective. Pricing is not dependent on the number of SharePoint servers
• 35+ pre-packaged common SharePoint workflow activities powered by advanced metadata framework for creating directly executable workflow
• SharePoint List Forms for a remarkably simple and quick form to deliver Web form benefits
• Easily expand richer and more consistent ‘code-free’ workflow creation and capabilities for business users and IT
• Powerful SharePoint governance and full audit trails
• Feature rich ad-hoc reporting and analysis
• Excel Services Integration

• Dynamic Approval – Parallel and Sequential
• Voting and Workload Balancing support

• Powerful Document Management and Enterprise Content Management support
• Empower business users and departments to self serve their workflows
• Highly visual, drag-and-drop process composition and direct execution
• Synchronization Support with SharePoint Groups
• SharePoint User and Group Management
   

SharePoint Integration Features

AgilePoint provides a visual, Microsoft Visio based composition environment that allows you to connect to almost any SharePoint entity to quickly build workflow that is responsive to specific SharePoint metadata.

Sites, List Items, Document and Form Libraries, and Content Types

AgilePoint comes with a feature rich set of Web Parts for SharePoint and a stencil of 35+ pre-packaged, common SharePoint workflow related activities, so it is quick and easy to get started building workflows.

The AgilePoint Web Parts include:

• AgilePoint Task List: To view a process in real-time, manage and complete tasks, view the tasks of direct reports, reassign tasks, etc.
• AgilePoint Process Instance List: A dashboard of all running processes.
• AgilePoint Process Model List: An inventory of all process models that are deployed to the AgilePoint Server. Users can perform one-click process initiation.

In-Fight Process Modification

AgilePoint offers unparalleled agility and extreme control over your business processes that are in flight. During runtime, leverage functionality for dynamic in-flight modifications to quickly handle exceptions and change.

Below are some examples of just what you can do with a workflow at runtime:

• Process Migration
• Partial Task Rework
• Reroutes
• Task Re-assignment
• Adding Steps
• Adding Participants
• Dynamic Group 

The Right Layer of Integration for Peace of Mind

You have one less thing to worry, the AgilePoint SharePoint integration keeps SharePoint clean and drastically eases support and maintenance, upgrades and migration to new versions of workflows has never been easier.

AgilePoint has been architected to provide a clean boundary between SharePoint and your workflow applications to ensure your mission critical workflows are not impacted and your SharePoint performance does not lag.

This clean and open integration architecture enables AgilePoint to comply with the Microsoft Gold-Level SharePoint Customization Policy!

Forms

AgilePoint’s dynamic architecture is form agnostic, supporting a broad range of form technologies including InfoPath, SharePoint List Form, ASP.NET, Win Forms, WPF, etc. AgilePoint also provides AgileForm, a powerful form builder component that enables business users to create complex Web forms which can be rendered into ASP.NET with no code. To learn more about AgilePoint’s form offerings, click here.

System Requirements

AgilePoint works with Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 and 2010.