Scott Woodgate and team - Announcing Windows Workflow Foundation

The Discussion

• 

  Not being able to watch this video at home (silly isp rubbish), hearing about it instantly brings a question to mind:
  
  How does this relate to Biztalk?
  
  Are MS giving us a nice easy interface to setup business workflow's for free? I hope so

• 

  Looks like a Biztalk Orchestration to me!!
  

• 

  From memory, this was formerly known as Windows Orchestration Engine.
  
  There's a fair bit of information out there on WinOE.
  
  Sounds promising.
  
  Haven't seen the video yet though.

• 

  Does it works also for ASP.NET programming or just for Windows client - server programming?
  Does it ships with the tracking and ad hoc workflowing for ASP.NET applications?
  
  Thanks.

• 

  Looks Impressive.
  
  I can't wait to have a play. Looks like a tool that I could really make use of. When can we expect to see it ship?
  
  

• 

  I've designed an application anticipating this functionality and need help from this point forward. I am not a developer. I have built the application logic, dataset, metrics,view and activity workflow and identified the connection points - a wireframe for catapulting  companies customer interaction management.
  
  
  If you found your way here, I'm thinking you can probably help me or know a resource that can help build out the functioning application.
  
  Please send contact info to mrhoffman@clientxclient.com

• 

  Interesting.   Somewhat similar to what I have been envisioning for some time.  Have you been reading my posts? Luckily, I still have the best ideas up my sleeve, as I would not post them here. I can't believe you are just arriving at this point.

  As far as there being a performance hit by using graphical workflows "in the past"...whatta bunch of bull. 

  What's with the editing...edit...ed...editing in parts of this video? It reminded me of Max...Max...Max Headroom for a minute around the 28:05 and 28:19 marks.

  I'm worried that this is going into Office 12, though.  Then every secretary will think of themselves "a programmer".  If you thought font/table h**l in Word was bad, wait til you see an admin assistant send an urgent Outlook message to the Exchange server as part of a workflow.

  Repeatedly.

  "Reply to all" anybody?

  I don't think Access Control and gray boxes are going to save us. Please keep this away from my superiors, also.  Management LOVES workflows.
  
  How does this tool scale visually? Like if you have large switch statements or large programs? I thought I saw an IF/THEN statement earlier on.

• 

  You are so going to get sued.
  
  WWF.  Really?  Not heard of the World Wildlife Fund?  Heard that they sued the World Wrestling Federation?  If Hulk Hogan can't beat the Panda, I don't give BillG a prayer.
  
  Go tell someone to change the name.  Now, before the lawyers get ahold of this and stop the release of a perfectly good product.
  
  And go make a nice donation to the WWF.
  

• 

  This is cool...

  I vaguely remember from the last PDC hearing something about the WinFS InfoAgent, which was a services that would essentially allow users to manage their data by creating custom workflows. Will there be any integration between InfoAgent and WWF, or no?

  (For that matter, does anyone know if InfoAgents are still on board as part of WinFS, or was that cut in the Longhorn reboot from last August?)

• 

  An online guide to the workflow foundation is available at http://wfguide.blogspot.com/