SharePoint 2013 Workflows – Requirements

If you are interested in SharePoint 2013 Workflows. I can say SharePoint 2013 workflows has never been powerful as before. Which is come us with a tremendous improvement and completely new architecture. As every new System and new architecture brings new problems as always been , thats the nature of the new releases , so before going into dark side , you have to sure that you have working with last updates.

For the overview of SharePoint 2013 Workflows you can find more info from MSDN:

• Get started with workflows in SharePoint 2013
• What’s new in workflows for SharePoint 2013
• SharePoint 2013 workflow fundamentals
• SharePoint workflow development best practices
• Using the pairing cmdlet Register-SPWorkflowService
• Workflow development in SharePoint Designer 2013 and Visio 2013
• Develop SharePoint 2013 workflows using Visual Studio
• Workflow actions and activities reference for SharePoint 2013

Workflow Manager 1.0:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj193528(v=azure.10).aspx

Windows Workflow Foundation:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/jj684582.aspx

I would like to share some important upgrade and suggestions that may prevent your pains when you try to adapting the new SharePoint 2013 workflows.

First thing is the prerequisites ;

-> Bold Lines extra requirements and fixes many issues

*Workflow Manager 1.0 RTM (Shipped with SP2013 RTM)
*Workflow Manager 1.0 Service Pack 1
*Workflow Manager 1.0 Client for SharePoint 2013 Servers .
(If you installing Workflow Manager 1.0 via Web Platform installer it is automattically installs if your machine already installed SharePoint 2013)

*Service Bus 1.0
*Service Bus 1.0 Service Pack 1

I would suggest to use Web Platform Installer for install and setup and tracking for new upgrades for Workflow Manager and Service Bus.

*SharePoint 2013
*SharePoint 2013 and at least March PU update.
http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/Workflow-Improvements-Changes-SP2013-March-PU-and-RTM-Developer-Tools
*I have suggested that Install Latest Current CU (Currently October 2013 CU for SharePoint 2013)

 *.Net FrameWork 4.5 (It is also SharePoint 2013 prerequisites)
*Always check the .Net FrameWork 4.5 Hotfixes.

For Developers :

*Visual Studio 2012 with latest Upgrade
*Office Developer tools for Visual Studio 2012 RTM (Again use Web Platform Installer for tracing new updates)
*Worflow Manager Tools 1.0 for VS 2012 (If you installing Workflow Manager 1.0 via Web Platform installer it is automattically installs if your machine already installed VS2012)

Here Some other Suggestions;

* When after you register your workflow service as below command:

Register-SPWorkflowService -SPSite “http://blog.bugrapostaci.com” -WorkflowHostUri “http://workflow.bugrapostaci.com:12291” -Scope “Workflows” -AllowOAuthHttp
Make sure that you are using -WorkflowHostUri as full FQDN name , otherwise you may face some funcy Access denied issues.

*When you are using developing or testing don’t use System account. You may face also some System.Unauthorize exceptions which is also described technet it is not supported.

*Sometimes when you are working with Visual Studio you may face your latest build doesn’t deployed to the farm. That is a VS Caching problem. Always use latest VS bits. (Restarting VS or killing vshost exe can fixes that issue on next deployment)