Customer Reviews

Workflow in the 2007 Microsoft Office System

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have been creating workflows in SharePoint 2007 since early in the beta. The process is challenging and - at times - frustrating. David has done an excellent job providing the details and examples necessary for developers to be successful. You will find answers in this book that are not available from any other source.

I struggled with workflows, especially integreating the webified versions into MOSS 2007 Forms Server going back to the very early beta days. While I was able to get them to work, some concepts were hazy to me. David's book brought it all together with some fantastic examples. If you're new to WF, this first section will address the core concepts... no need to go out and get another workflow book. The three chapters on creating a custom activity, creating a sequential & statemachine workflow, and making it available over the web via Forms Server are fantastic.

Only reason I'm not giving it a 5 out of 5 is because the book is very conversational. A book of this type should be more reference, not "chatty."

Having used MOSS 2007 and WF since their beta timescales I've always struggled to find a source of useful information on this topic . . . enter "Workflow in the 2007 Microsoft Office System".

The book starts off basic, covering the concepts behind WF and workflows using SharePoint Designer. Then it gets down and dirty into the essentials like activity development, sequential workflows, state machine workflows, workflow forms and lots of other good stuff that you'll need to know should you want to write custom workflows for MOSS.

Excellently covered and very informative and easy to follow - a must for a SharePoint developers bookshelf.

This is one of the first books to focus on Workflow solutions for Office Sharepoint server. I think the author has done a good job covering the essential technology and given good examples.

Over all, I think this is a very good reference book for someone who starts to learn work flow development on SharePoint.

I agree with many of the reviews already written. This is a well organized and to the point tutorial on workflows with the Office system. I skimmed through once to get the high level overview, and dove into chapter 6 to get into designing workflows in visual studio very quickly.

As was pointed out in another review, the author is 'conversational' but I didn't feel like it hurt the book at all. I guess that is a matter of personal preference. Overall, this book was very helpful and I would highly recommend it.

I think this book is a great starting point for SharePoint and WF. I have not another found a consolidated reference on the topic... makes it easy to find all of the needed material to get started in one read.

I bought this book as a reference book, but found myself actually reading through it instead! It is very well-written and easy to understand for a non-programmer like me. It covers very simple workflow and also gets into the more complex things you can do to solve very specific business problems when you add Sharepoint Designer. Excellent coverage of workflow from beginning to end.

Steps are not clearly defined. Author puts steps in paragraph when he should be putting each instruction line by line. Its very easy to miss one crucial step and nothing works after that. Reason I gave four stars because author tries his best however may be the subject or so many steps you need to perform to make workflow work in sharepoint.

Great service, great price! I got my book very quickly and the book is in great condition.

This book has great breadth, but the depth suffers. If you've never used workflows in SharePoint Designer this is a great book to get you started - for that audience I give it 5 stars. But it lacks information I consider fundamental like using variables and building reject/revise loops into workflows. Once you are past the beginner stage it goes on the shelf.

Not being a programmer I can't evaluate the VisualStudio and coding sections of the book except to say that a power end-user like me can't understand that half of the book, and a programmer will be bored by the first half of the book. It is well written, and if the author ever writes two full books I think they would be great.