Workflow Designer Integration
Lightswitch is a killer app with respect to LoB application development. My current client is giving up on the ASP.NET platform for an LoB application because Oracle has sold them on the idea of ADF forms and their BPM (ex Weblogic) Workflow integration using JDeveloper (sic).
Lightswitch is the perfect counter to ADF offering same/richer UI interactions, speed of delivery and ease of use, however lack of Workflow Integration makes it unsuitable for developing workflow application. With Sharepoint's anemic WF support and WF runtime's default set of activities library, building LoB WF applications in ASP.NET is a pain.
1. Throw the workflow designer in LS or using the Visio Workflow Designer canvas to allow users to build BPM workflows.
2. Do the code plumbing behind the scenes to use Windows Workflow Runtime engine.
3. Provide a drop in Task Library functionality
4. Enhance the Workflow Activities library with basic activities like sending email, calling webservice (I guess it's already there, but look at Nintex for Sharepoint's WF implementation to see how it can be targeted for business users), doing HTTP Post, creating Tasks, LDAP integration.
Voila! LS will beat the pants off anything ADF+BPM can do. Oh, yes, icing to cake would be publish to Sharepoint :-)
Sumit Maitra
shared this idea
6 comments
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IDLCG
commented
Again....All together will be a great tool......as in IBM Lombardi and Bizagi.....
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IDLCG
commented
Im working with IBM Tools (Lombardi) and Bizagi - and I completely support this idea...all together will be a GREAT TOOL
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Jared Howerton
commented
This should be a standard button (like Save, Refresh) for every screen that is fully integrated with the authentication engine. It should be as easy as dropping a button to add workflow capabilities to any screen.
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Andy Kung
commented
Thank you for the idea!
- LightSwitch Team
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Faris Rizal
commented
Well, you can make lightswitch work with a Windows Workflow Foundation SERVICE. I've made it work on Beta 1. I'm pretty sure that it could also work on the release version of LightSwitch. Nevertheless, having a built-in WF designer would be awesome!
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John
commented
Totally support this request. I think that Workflow should be a standalone Silverlight control that can also be embedded into LightSwitch but used to help augment smaller views of workflow history etc that could be posted into Business focused web sites.
