The Windows Workflow Foundation WebCasts

Workflow WebCasts Coming Up

MSDN Architecture Webcast: Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation in Retail and Hospitality (Level 200)

Monday, May 22, 2006
10:00am - 11:00am
Presenter: Marc Mercuri

Workflow, rules, and communications are both omnipresent and critical in the retail and hospitality industries, whether it is the checkout process in a brick and mortar store, or the check-in process at a hotel; the calculation of tax or loyalty card points, or communicating to a third-party payment provider. This webcast explores multiple real-world scenarios where applications based on the Windows Communication Foundation (formerly code-named "Indigo") and Windows Workflow Foundation features of the WinFX programming model can be used in the retail and hospitality industries. Demonstrations and code samples are also provided.

Getting from 0-60 with Windows Workflow Foundation

Thursday, June 1, 2006
10:00am - 11:00am Pacific Time
Presenter: Matthew Winkler

This webcast will discuss tips for learning about Windows Workflow Foundation and taking advantage of it in your software business. The session will include a first time developers walk through of Windows Workflow Foundation and what is provided out of the box, it will cover a variety of scenarios where developers should consider using Windows Workflow Foundation in an application and it will point you to several places where you can get sample code or learn about specific aspects of the technology.

MSDN Architecture Webcast: Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, and "InfoCard" in the Public Sector (Level 200)

Tuesday, June 6, 2006

10:00am - 11:00am Pacific Daylight Time

Presenter: Marc Mercuri

Whether the interactions are government to citizen, government to business, or government agency to government agency, the public sector is driven by workflow, communications, and identity. This webcast focuses on components of the WinFX programming model, such as Windows Communication Foundation (formerly code-named "Indigo"), Windows Workflow Foundation, and the upcoming code-name "InfoCard" identity metasystem, and shows how these technologies can be implemented to ease integration, increase productivity, and enable new scenarios in the public sector. Real-world examples and demonstrations are included in the presentation.

Workflow WebCast Archive

Building State Machine-based Workflows Using Windows Workflow Foundation

Thursday, May 18, 2006
10:00am - 11:00am Pacific Time
Presenter: Pravin Indurkar

This webcast describes how to build event-driven workflows with Windows Workflow Foundation using a state-machine design pattern. Learn how to use state machine workflows to model processes that require control flow flexibility. We also discuss how to build a workflow process and then query on a running process to determine its current state. The session concludes with a look at some human workflow patterns such as skip rework, re-assignment, and escalation.

Building Rules-Based Applications Using Windows Workflow Foundation

Thursday, April 27, 2006
10:00am - 11:00am Pacific Time
Presenter: Jurgen Willis

Rules can be powerful business tools when combined with workflow. This webcast examines the rules engine capabilities in Windows Workflow Foundation, and shows how you can use rules to drive workflow execution. Learn how rule policies facilitate the description of sophisticated behavior in an integrated and flexible way. We also discuss the extensibility mechanisms in Windows Workflow Foundation that enable you to leverage the rules engine in any Microsoft .NET-connected application.

Monitoring running Workflows using the Tracking Service

Thursday, March 30th, 2006
10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time
Presenter: Moustafa Ahmed

In Windows Workflow Foundation the tracking service keeps log information about activity execution status. The workflow runtime automatically outputs various events about executing workflow instances to a tracking service. This session will cover the capabilities of the default tracking service, it will show you the workflow monitor sample application and it will cover how and why you would create a custom tracking service.

Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, and Identity in Financial Services (Level 200)

Tuesday, March 28, 2006
11:00 AM - 12:00 pm Pacific Time
Presenters: Marc Mercuri & Vittorio Bertocci

Financial service companies face market pressures to lower information technology (IT) costs and retain existing customers while growing their businesses. Complicating these business goals are complex IT challenges that result in costly system maintenance and integration. As a result, companies are looking to service-oriented design as a means to leverage their IT assets to meet their business goals, focusing on lowering integration costs within and beyond their corporate boundaries. Microsoft is providing the tools to build connected systems based on service-oriented design principles. In this webcast, we specifically discuss Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, and the Microsoft WinFX application programming interface (API) component code named “InfoCard.”

New Features in Windows Workflow Foundation Beta 2

Thursday, February 9th, 2006
10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time
Presenter: Paul Andrew

Windows Workflow Foundation Beta 2 is here and there are some great new features to talk about. This session reviews the new work in Beta 2 covering each area of Windows Workflow Foundation in brief.

Workflow Authoring Styles – Mixing XAML and Code

Thursday, January 26, 2006
10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time
Presenter: Bob Schmidt

Windows Workflow Foundation offers developers several alternative ways of defining their workflows. In this talk, we will explore each of the alternatives, and discuss some of the key factors that can influence your choice of authoring mode. Workflows can be (1) defined entirely in code; or, more typically, can be (2) split between a XAML file (which defines the workflow model) and a code file (which defines the workflow business logic). In some cases, the entire workflow can be (3) expressed in XAML, in which case you have a choice of whether to (3a) compile the workflow, or to (3b) run it without compilation.

Making Changes to Running Workflows in Windows Workflow Foundation

Thursday, December 8, 2005
10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time
Presenter: Bob Schmidt

As workflows can be long running there may be requirements to change the workflow model for a running workflow instance. To take one example, workflows may involve human interaction and ad-hoc process changes may need to occur as a result. In this session a sample application will be built that lists running workflow instances, allows the user to view the design of any of those running instances, and lets the user make changes to individual workflow instances.

Workflow in a Web Application

Thursday, November 10, 2005
10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time
Presenter: Israel Hilerio

Web applications interact with users on a page request by page request basis. They rely on state that is maintained between page requests by the web server. Using a workflow to hold this state adds execution management. It also means that process that previously was hidden in code behind web pages can now be called out as a workflow model diagram. This session shows how the Windows Workflow Foundation workflow runtime can be hosted in ASP.NET and how you can make use of this.

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Developing Rules Driven Workflows

Thursday, October 27, 2005
10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time

Rules can be a powerful business tool when combined with workflow. See how to develop more advanced activities that support the modeling of rich business behavior, such as human workflow. Learn when to use rules for business logic. Also, see how rule policies allow for the description of sophisticated behavior in an integrated and flexible way. This session gives you an interesting insight into the power of using workflow at the core of a line of business application. This session is presented by Jurgen Willis, Program Manager at Microsoft.

Friday: Extending Workflow Capabilities with Custom Activities
Friday, September 30, 2005
10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time

Activities can be thought of as controls within a workflow, similar to controls used with ASP.NET Pages or Windows Forms. Activities are used to encapsulate execution logic, communicate with the host and to decompose a workflow into reusable components. This session examines the simple process of creating custom activities. Any developer who wants to expose their activities to other developers designing workflows should attend this session. This session is presented by Bob Schmidt, Program Manager at Microsoft.

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Thursday: Developing Event Driven State Machine Workflows
Thursday, September 29, 2005
10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time

State machines used to be something that had to be drawn on paper and then implemented in code. This session shows how technologies can be used to create event-driven workflows and how you can apply this to a programming problem. We introduce the concept of a flexible process and how this can help with modeling real-world processes using state and sequential workflow. Plenty of coding is included: be prepared to see how you can seamlessly merge state machine design and your code. This session is presented by Pravin Indurkar, Program Manager at Microsoft.

Wednesday: Workflow + Messaging + Services: Developing Distributed Applications with Workflows
Wednesday, September 28, 200510:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time

Web service technologies have typically taken a "do-it-yourself" approach to maintaining the inter-operation state of the service. Using workflow, developers now have tools to describe the long-running state of their services and delegate much of the state management to the underlying platform. Managing this state correctly becomes even more difficult in applications that coordinate work across multiple services either within an organization or at Internet scale. This session looks at how developers who use either ASMX or Windows Communications Foundation (formerly codename "Indigo") can create workflow-centric applications that are both faster to write and more manageable and flexible once deployed. This session is presented by James Conard, Evangelist at Microsoft.

Tuesday: Hosting and Communications Options in Workflow Scenarios
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time

The code for this session is now available for download.

The session looks at options for hosting workflow applications. This includes managing events, instance tracking, persistence, as well as a close look at the simple communications mechanisms that are available to the workflow developer. This session is presented by Israel Hilerio, Program Manager at Microsoft.

Monday: Simple Human Workflow Using EMail
Monday, September 26, 2005
10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time

In this session New Zealand based Regional Director, Chris Auld , will walk attendees through a simple worked example of the use of SMTP email as part of a workflow solution. Chris will demonstrate how to create custom activities to query Active Directory to retrieve user data, send email and finally wait for email responses to continue the workflow process. The code intensive session will give users taking their first steps with workflow a good grounding in some of the key extensibility concepts.

Introduction to Workflow in Windows Applications
Thursday, September 15, 2005

10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time

The demos for this session are available for download.

This session is a code-focused introduction to use of workflow in applications. We cover the "hello world" of developing workflow enabled applications and take you to a level where you can be confident choosing workflow for everyday applications. We cover the basics of developing, designing, and debugging workflow solutions. Presented by Bill Devlin & Paul Andrew live from the PDC.