Saturday 31 May 2014

Using the SharePoint 2013 Workflow Interop Service in CSOM

In my previous post, I briefly introduced the SharePoint 2013 Workflow Architecture and also showed how to programmatically manage the SharePoint 2013 Workflows via the Workflow Services in the Client Site Object Model (CSOM). I will recommend to read that post before this one.

You can find the previous post here: Managing SharePoint 2013 Workflows with CSOM

As a follow up to that post, in this post I will show how to start a Workflow authored with the SharePoint 2010 Engine.

The Workflow Services in the CSOM contain an InteropService which is a hook in the SharePoint 2010 Windows Workflow Foundation runtime engine.

This code works with SharePoint 2013 On-Premises as well as with SharePoint Online. I have created my sample code against SharePoint Online.

Before you run this code, you will need to create a SharePoint 2010 Workflow (Definition) either via SharePoint Designer 2010/2013 or through Visual Studio 2012/2013 and deploy it to your SharePoint 2013 target site. You can then use this code to start the Workflow

You will need to reference the following Assemblies:
Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll
Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.dll
Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.WorkflowServices.dll

1) Start a SharePoint 2010 Site Workflow with CSOM:




2) Start a SharePoint 2010 List Workflow with CSOM:


3 comments:

yaswanth said...

Hi Vardhaman,

Thanks for this post, very useful.

Using the sample code in this article under '1) Start a SharePoint 2010 Site Workflow with CSOM', i managed to create code for starting the workflow.

i want to write csom code for terminating the 2010 list workflows in 2010 sites

i can see there is a method for this 'WorkflowInteropService.CancelWorkflow'(https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.workflowservices.workflowinteropservice.cancelworkflow.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396),using this method i am able to terminate the workflow by passing the workflow instance id directly(instance id i got from the url by clicking on the workflow that is running on the list item for example when i click on the workflow that is running on the list item, url will get changed to 'https://site//_layouts/WrkStat.aspx?List=1613c2a1-0dd5-406b-b0ff-b554ca37bf3c&WorkflowInstanceID=%7bE2AB0231%2d2BB0%2d4465%2dB0AC%2dF6EC83313D28%7d' in this workflow instance id is E2AB0231-2BB0-4465-B0AC-F6EC83313D28)

Can you please let me know how i can get all the 2010 workflow instances that are running on a list item using csom.

Thanks in advance.

Matt said...

Hi Vardhaman

I'm looking to kick off a modified 2010 approval workflow in SharePoint online. The old code I have has custom initiation data to set the Assignment stages at the time I start the workflow. How can I do that with CSOM given that I no longer pass in XML. I don't find any examples of this, only ones for simple initiation parameters in the Dictionary.

Thanks

deepthi said...

Hi vardhaman,


i want to start a modified 2010 approval workflow in SharePoint online.above code worked for me todo so, but the problem here is workflow was not assigned to no one and is in rejected status, and i found no task has been created.So please let me know how to pass parameters to workflow, How can I do that with CSOM.

even i tried to pass association data xml to initiation parameter dictionary.that doesn't work. I don't find any examples of this, only empty
initiation parameters in the Dictionary.