I'm proud to announce that Collaboration Consulting Inc. has signed a partnership agreement with Nintex (www.nintex.com). 

The world of SharePoint workflow is an interesting one.  The continuum starts with default "out of the box workflows" for document management, goes to SharePoint Designer for customizing workflow within pre-determined limits, and extends out to Visual Studio 2005 through coding changes.

The default out of the box approval and collect feedback workflows, as any of you who have had experience with them will know, are useful, but their use really hits a wall very quickly.  They're great in supporting content management for a document library but I've never really been able to get them do address real world process issues.

At the other end, designing workflows through Visual Studio moves a business into the world of software development.  And short of the issues associated with that, my personal vision is that if you have to introduce new code through workflow you must be missing something. Custom development driven by workflow seems to be counter-productive to me.  Certainly, custom development for a specific business application makes much sense, but given the many and frequent potential needs to creating and revising workflow by a business user I think this is the wrong track to take.

And then there is SharePoint Designer.  This Microsoft tool will let you customize workflow within the Windows Workflow Foundation context but in short it's brutal to use.  I would never want to implement extensive workflow this way within a client's solution.  If nothing else it breaks the axiom of 'simple'. 

Into this gap three major players have come.  One of them, Nintex Workflow 2007, was chosen by Collboration Consultling Inc. because quite frankly they have the simplest approach.  But more on that in another blog.  Once I get access to their partner tools I'm going to start the journey of becoming a Nintex Workflow expert.  If the promise of what I've seen so far is any indication I expect to have some very interesting and exciting stories to relate in the future!

I'm proud to announce that Collaboration Consulting Inc. has signed a partnership agreement with Nintex (www.nintex.com). 

The world of SharePoint workflow is an interesting one.  The continuum starts with default "out of the box workflows" for document management, goes to SharePoint Designer for customizing workflow within pre-determined limits, and extends out to Visual Studio 2005 through coding changes.

The default out of the box approval and collect feedback workflows, as any of you who have had experience with them will know, are useful, but their use really hits a wall very quickly.  They're great in supporting content management for a document library but I've never really been able to get them do address real world process issues.

At the other end, designing workflows through Visual Studio moves a business into the world of software development.  And short of the issues associated with that, my personal vision is that if you have to introduce new code through workflow you must be missing something. Custom development driven by workflow seems to be counter-productive to me.  Certainly, custom development for a specific business application makes much sense, but given the many and frequent potential needs to creating and revising workflow by a business user I think this is the wrong track to take.

And then there is SharePoint Designer.  This Microsoft tool will let you customize workflow within the Windows Workflow Foundation context but in short it's brutal to use.  I would never want to implement extensive workflow this way within a client's solution.  If nothing else it breaks the axiom of 'simple'. 

Into this gap three major players have come.  One of them, Nintex Workflow 2007, was chosen by Collboration Consultling Inc. because quite frankly they have the simplest approach.  But more on that in another blog.  Once I get access to their partner tools I'm going to start the journey of becoming a Nintex Workflow expert.  If the promise of what I've seen so far is any indication I expect to have some very interesting and exciting stories to relate in the future!