Notes workflows are almost always implemented as code attached to various buttons, form events and agents. By contrast, the Microsoft platform encourages the use of declarative workflows — the workflow is expressed as a set of rules that can be entered, modified, and (best of all) understood by a non-programmer. You can write code if you need to, but this code is usually confined to “activities,” the units of action that you wire together in your declarative workflow.
Declarative workflow capabilities have improved significantly in SharePoint 2010. First of all, you get a much richer set of out-of-the-box workflows to use in your applications. This list depends on what edition of SharePoint you install and which SharePoint template you are using, but at a minimum it should include an Approval Process, a Collect Feedback review process, a Collect Signatures review process, and a Disposition Approval workflow for managing content lifecycles. You can now customize the out-of-the-box workflows if needed or design your own from scratch.
If you do need to design your own workflows, you can benefit from the new capabilities in SharePoint Designer. This option was somewhat limited in SharePoint 2007, which forced many companies to use Visual Studio instead, but those days are gone. Now SharePoint Designer workflows can address the need of the majority of the workflows found in Notes applications without having to write code.
10 Ways SharePoint 2010 Will Affect Your Notes Migration
10 Ways SharePoint 2010 Will Affect Your Notes Migration
Over the past five years, many organizations have decided to abandon their legacy Lotus Notes/Domino environments and transition to a platform based on Microsoft collaboration technologies (Exchange Server, SharePoint and Office). Many of these organizations, though, have hesitated in tackling the most difficult part of this transition: migrating their applications from Notes to SharePoint. Some hesitate due to concerns about the cost of rebuilding their applications on SharePoint, while others worry whether SharePoint has all the capabilities that their applications would need.
Quest Software contends that the release of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Foundation 2010 has changed the situation dramatically, for two reasons. First, Microsoft added a great deal of functionality that directly targets the needs of enterprises migrating from Lotus Notes. Second, Microsoft significantly improved the tools for developing custom applications in SharePoint, thus reducing the time and cost required to rebuild applications.
This slideshow highlights 10 aspects of SharePoint 2010 identified by Quest Software that will change the game for enterprises of all sizes who want to use SharePoint to replace or enhance their Notes environments. The first six items are major platform and functionality improvements that Notes people should especially appreciate and that will change their thinking about how applications might be rebuilt. The last four items address improvements of particular interest to developers who want to rebuild the functionality of their Notes applications on SharePoint.
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