Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) is Microsoft's technology for modelling implementing and executing workflows.
The technology was released in November 2006 as a part of Microsoft's .NET Framework 3.0 (and 3.5) that enables developers to create workflow enabled applications.

Windows Workflow Foundation is the programming model, engine and tools for building workflow enabled applications on Windows. It consists of .NET classes, an in-process workflow engine, and designers for Visual Studio.

Windows Workflow Foundation includes support for both human workflow scenarios and system workflow scenarios, including workflow within line-of-business applications, document-centric workflow, composite workflow for service-oriented applications, business rule-driven workflow, and workflow for systems management.

Windows Workflow Foundation can be developed and run on Windows Vista, Windows XP, and the Windows Server 2003 family and provides full support for C#, Visual Basic .NET, a graphical workflow designer, and developing workflow completely in code or in markup. Windows Workflow Foundation also provides an extensible model and designer to build custom activities that encapsulate workflow functionality for end users or for reuse across multiple projects.

Windows Workflow Foundation supports three top-level models for workflows: state machine, sequential processing and rules driven processing. These models enables to compose applications out of high-level building blocks representing the activities that the application performs. Windows Workflow Foundation enables can build portions of an application that orchestrate, or manage, the process flow for the use cases your application supports. Windows Workflow Foundation can be used in the middle-tier business components, or used in the UI tier to control the flow from one view in the UI to another.

Windows Workflow Foundation is a complex model that requires high level programming skills. Programmers should have a good .Net backgraund, prefably with BizTalk oriantation, as the Windows Workflow Foundation is an extraction of the BizTalk orchestration definition. There is a fair amount of complexity to tackle just to put together a simple example, which is not the kind of application that Windows Workflow Foundation was really designed to address. However, Windows Workflow Foundation starts to shine when building an application that is driven by a state machine, Workflow Foundation provides a very easy-to-understand abstraction layer on top of the code the makes it all come together.

SEQUENCE provides the business-user with a friendly environment, to transform Microsoft products into an end-to-end BPM and Workflow product.

Windows Workflow Foundation is a set of .NET classes and services aimed at highly skilled developers enabling elementary workflow capabilities.
It is an infrastructure used by software vendors to develop their BPM and Workflow products.

SEQUENCE and Windows Workflow Foundation

SEQUENCE BPM and Workflow server is a platform built on top of the Windows Workflow Foundation infrastructure and enables transformation of the workflow infrastructure into a Human Workflow product.

SEQUENCE in an end-to-end BPM and Human Workflow platform, providing in a single package, all the necessary tools that enable business users to develop, run, manage and monitor business processes.

SEQUENCE's Window Workflow Foundation Integration includes:

• A complete development life cycle, including easy deployment to the production environment.
• Easy modifications of business rules by process owners on the production environment.
• Predefined activities.
• Integrated form editor.
• Hundreds of wizards for easy deployment of workflow components.
• Integrated database creation, web service creator , and process hosting.
• Support for complex scenarios (loops, drafts, sub-flows etc…).
• Advanced routing mechanism, allowing task automation to users ,groups, organizational roles, and process roles - subject to different business rules.
• Extendable set of built-in reports allowing traceability of workflow data and meta-data.
• Extendable set of graphical monitoring gauges, enabling to reassess process and participant performance according to preset thresholds and Key Performance Indicators (KPI).
• Easy implementation of SLA policies either for a specific process or on a corporate level.
• Support for delegation, voting, Outlook integration.
• Offline support.
• Task reassignment and delegation.
• Ad-hoc task assignment.
• Automatic management of task workloads for shared workgroups.
• Automatic synchronization between the development environment and the administration (tables, permissions, roles etc…).
• Active Directory synchronization (across domains) utilizing both organizational units and security groups for human workflow purposes (routing, authorization, workloads management, etc…)
• Advanced Authorization Mechanism, either static or dynamic, adjusted to qualify for specific human-workflow based application needs.

For more about our WF integration, contact us or request our white paper