In SharePoint there are many different options for workflows. Microsoft and Microsoft partners have invested a lot of time creating different sorts of workflow solutions. For the more experienced user and developers there is a long list of options:
- SharePoint Designer 2010 workflows
- SharePoint Designer 2013 workflows
- SharePoint out of the box workflows
- Visual Studio workflows
- Nintex
- K2
- and many more.
Recently Microsoft have launched Microsoft Flow as a new solution. but my experience with flow hasn’t been very good yet as the options available are quite limited (unless you use web services steps a lot) :
Creating list items using Power Automate
Also Microsoft have announced that there will be no SharePoint Designer 2016.
So what does this mean to my workflow options?
Should I not use SharePoint Designer workflows anymore as they will be difficult to maintain in future? Or will SharePoint Designer 2013 simply work with the later versions of SharePoint?
Back to my initial question in this article. Are workflows important?
It looks like many solutions have been put in place in the past. With recent changes made in SharePoint Online/Office 365 the workflow solutions available seem to struggle to keep up with the pace.
So whenever possible the best platform to use will probably be Microsoft Flow, however with my recent experiences I found that if I want to stick to the free options that SharePoint Designer workflows still work better.
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Pieter Veenstra
Is your business still running on paper trails, sprawling Excel files, or ageing Access databases? There's a better way — and I can show you exactly what it looks like. I'm the Technical Director of Vantage 365, a Microsoft solutions consultancy working with clients across the UK, the Netherlands, and worldwide. For over 30 years I've been turning messy, manual business processes into clean, automated systems that save time, reduce errors, and give teams the visibility they need to make better decisions. SharePains is not just any blog run by a Microsoft MVP. Have you ever used Try-Catch in Power Automate? The original post about Try-Catch in Power Automate can still be found on this site, https://sharepains.com/2018/02/07/try-catch-finally-in-power-automate-flow/ Or have you ever used the Pieter’s method to avoid variables and speed up your flows? https://sharepains.com/2020/03/11/pieters-method-for-advanced-in-flows/ You can contact me using contact@sharepains.com
Pieter Veenstra
Is your business still running on paper trails, sprawling Excel files, or ageing Access databases? There's a better way — and I can show you exactly what it looks like. I'm the Technical Director of Vantage 365, a Microsoft solutions consultancy working with clients across the UK, the Netherlands, and worldwide. For over 30 years I've been turning messy, manual business processes into clean, automated systems that save time, reduce errors, and give teams the visibility they need to make better decisions. SharePains is not just any blog run by a Microsoft MVP. Have you ever used Try-Catch in Power Automate? The original post about Try-Catch in Power Automate can still be found on this site, https://sharepains.com/2018/02/07/try-catch-finally-in-power-automate-flow/ Or have you ever used the Pieter’s method to avoid variables and speed up your flows? https://sharepains.com/2020/03/11/pieters-method-for-advanced-in-flows/ You can contact me using contact@sharepains.com