A workflow represents a process from start to finish. Whatever the business scenario, the workflow models the events, actions, and situations that make up the process. For an independent software vendor (ISV) that process is often deeply entwined with his or her application. For a customer relationship management (CRM) vendor, that process might be creating a customer record. For a vendor of legal software, the process might be approving a document or tracking matter elements across partners to ensure proper billing. For a financial services software vendor, the process might be the entering and approval of payroll data.

Workflows are a core functionality provided in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (collectively referred to as Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies). Workflows can be used in both Office SharePoint Server and Windows SharePoint Services. These workflows tend to be people-centric, document-centric, or content-centric, which fits in well with the SharePoint mantra of communications and collaboration.

Microsoft provides two means to design and install workflow templates for SharePoint with the Office SharePoint Designer application and the Workflow Designer that's embedded into the popular Visual Studio 2005 IDE (Integrated Development Environment ...a programming tool).

When using Outlook 2007 and SharePoint, task lists can be easily synchronized. This includes Task lists that are managed by the workflow engine running in SharePoint. Implicitly this means that one doesn't have to open up the web browser to see the task list but all deadlines and task information are also available right on the desktop. The calendar(s) in Outlook 2007 and SharePoint can also be synchronized.

And more, even documents in SharePoint or entire document libraries can easily be made available, for offline editing, through synchronized folders in Outlook.

And as Outlook 2007 also allows notifications to be sent via text message (SMS), task alerts can reach the right person even when not online on a computer. And as you might have already expected: SharePoint can easily set up Mobile views of your data. So, even someone on the road with a half-way decent internet connection through the mobile phone could potentially participate in a feedback or approval workflow.

Word 2007 also gets quite a boost out of integrated workflow support with MOSS. Any Word document stored in a library in SharePoint allows the user to start or monitor a workflow right from within the Word application, with no need to leave the work environment or to open a web browser.

PowerPoint comes with its own kind of built-in "mini-workflow" attached to the Slide Library solution in MOSS: when a user, say a sales engineer, uses slides from the slide library, PowerPoint can remember the origin of these slides and will automatically notify the user when later opening his/her presentation again, if any of the original slides in the slide library have meanwhile been modified. Finally a solution to the common problem where sales staff inadvertently show outdated product information or prices to customers!

Excel Services is a very central solution of MOSS by itself, also involving workflow technology. Think of it as hosted Excel documents that are populated automatically by LoB applications through the BDC interface.

We provide the SharePoint workflow solution which enables any organization to enhance its productivity and increase accountability. By Our SharePoint workflow solutions you can easily get control on the life cycle of your documents.