The basic power of SharePoint stems from centralization—being able to put all of your business-related data, documents, information, and knowledge in one easy-to-browse, searchable place. That power can be extended in a very awesome way when an organization decides to build its day-to-day business processes into SharePoint workflows. But what are SharePoint workflows, and how can this work for your business or organization
On a very basic level, these specific workflows are a way to automate actions from within a list or library. Workflows may have many steps and conditions to govern the way a workflow is processed. The actions available inside SharePoint workflows include:
· Alerts – Send an e-mail alert or SharePoint task to an individual or group
· Permissions – Set the permissions on a given item or document
· Routing – Move a document or item to a different library or list, respectively
· Collect Information – Request input from another user
· Update Metadata – Change a metadata field or column value of a given item
These are just a few of the actions available when building out SharePoint workflow, though. Microsoft allows users access to a pretty comprehensive collection of actions in its easy-to-use SharePoint Designer application, and even more actions when building workflows programmatically using Visual Studio. For an end user, this means that basic workflows can be built by power users from within your organization, while more advanced workflows are best left to this software professionals.
On that note, there are many considerations to take into account before implementing SharePoint with workflows at your business. It takes a comprehensive understanding of an organization’s SharePoint landscape—from permissions and groups to e-mail configuration and content types—to implement a workflow that is secure, concise, and effective. And that’s where a consultant like me from Entrance can really help you surface the different SharePoint solutions that can streamline and automate your business