Author: Michael Bratley

Out of the Box SharePoint Server 2010 Workflows

Michael Bratley / / SharePoint 2010 Research

SharePoint 2010 offers the following workflows out of the box, ready to be used.

Workflow Description
Approval Routes a document for approval. Approvers can approve or reject the document, reassign the approval task, or request changes to the document.
Three State Track the status of a list item through three states (phases). It can be used to manage business processes that require organisations to track a high volume of issues or items, such as customer support issues, sales leads, or project tasks. For example, the three states for a project task could be, Not Started, In Progress, and Finished.
Collect Feedback Routes a document for review. Reviewers can provide feedback, which is compiled and sent to the document owner when the workflow has completed.
Collect Signatures Gathers signatures needed to complete an Office document. This workflow can be started only from within an Office client.
Disposition Approval Manages document expiration and retention by allowing participants to decide whether to retain or delete expired documents.
Group Approval Similar to the Approval workflow, but uses a designated document library and offers a personalised view of the approval process(es) in which a user is participating. This workflow provides a hierarchical organisation chart from which to select the approvers and allows the approvers to use a stamp control instead of a signature. This solution was designed specifically for East Asian Markets.
Transition Management Manages document translation by creating copies of the document to be translated and assigning translation tasks to translators.
Issue Tracking Manages the issue tracking process by creating tasks for Active issues assigned to users who own to a given issue. When the task related to an issue is complete hence resolving the issue, the creator of the issue is assigned a review task so that the issue can be closed.

* Information currently varies over which workflows are available out of the box in SharePoint Server 2010. As development progresses this table will be updated.

SharePoint on Mobile Devices

Michael Bratley / / SharePoint 2010 Migration

Being able to access SharePoint on the go is a major feature with the 2010 version. Out of the box, SharePoint will automatically redirect to a mobile site when accessed from such devices. However the out of the box look and feel is very basic, but you can still add and edit list items, access files and other functions etc.

 

The above screenshots show some examples of how a SharePoint site looks out of the box on a mobile device to end users. The only problem with using the out of the box mobile site, is that it offers no customisation with either the master page or the css files, and therefore are stuck with the very ‘light’ looking version. After a little research it does appear that there could be some solutions to the problem.

One document expresses that you have 3 options when it comes to the mobile site of SharePoint. The first is to do nothing, the second is a mobile app strategy and the third is a wrapper strategy. The mobile app strategy would give the best experience according to the author, however with almost as good an experience as the app is the wrapper strategy. The mobile app strategy would probably by best however at this early stage it would not be easy. The wrapper strategy would offer desktop content in a mobile skin and the desktop and mobile content would be the same compared to the out of the box mobile sites which offers a ‘watered down’ version. But if the mobile site is only going to be used by internal members of staff, the out of the box site will be just as good functionality wise.

It is also worth noting that when creating custom lists, that you will also need to create a mobile adaptor for it to display correctly on the mobile site. If you do not create one, that web part will not show up on the mobile site.