Sharepoint 2010 : Making Business Processes Work - Using the Provided Workflows (part 2) - Starting the Workflow from the Item Workflow Page, Starting the Workflow from Office 2010 Client

2. Testing Your Workflow

With the workflow association complete, we are ready to test. To test the new workflow, upload a document into your document library or create a new one from the New icon. If you selected a manual start, your workflow will not begin automatically. Instead, a user will have to initiate the workflow. There are two ways to initiate a manual workflow: from the items workflow page, or from within an Office 2007 or 2010 client application such as Word or Excel.

3. Starting the Workflow from the Item Workflow Page

For workflows that can be started manually, you do so from the item’s workflow page (see Figure 4). This is accessed from the items context menu using the Workflows option or by clicking the Workflows icon in the ribbon.

Figure 4. Select the Workflows option from the context menu to access the items workflow page. The workflow page can also be accessed by selecting the list item and clicking the Workflows icon in the ribbon.

The workflows page will display all the available workflows that can be started, as well as any running and completed workflows (see Figure 5).

Figure 5. The Item Workflow page allows you to select a workflow to start, and also shows running and completed workflows

Select the desired workflow, in this case the Quarterly Newsletter Review. Because we are gathering information described earlier (refer to Figure 3), we have the opportunity to modify the default values such as approvers, notification message, and so on. If the workflow did not require starting values, it would start immediately.

3. Starting the Workflow from Office 2010 Client

With SharePoint’s tight integration with Office 2010, it is not necessary to find the document in the browser to start its workflow. If you have the document already opened, go to the document BackStage (the File tab) and select Share, as you see in Figure 6.

Figure 6. The Office 2010 BackStage allows you to start a workflow without having to leave the client application

From the Share page, you see the available workflows listed at the bottom. Selecting the Quarterly Newsletter Review workflow displays its description and a Start Workflow button. Figure 7 shows the dialog requesting the start properties for the workflow, similar to how it would appear if started from the browser.

Figure 7. Office 2010 client prompts for workflow properties similar to starting the workflow from the browser

With the workflow now started, the next task is to check its status to make sure it is running and to see what stage it is at.