Technical Readiness Specialists - The success strategy for early or first time adoption of Microsoft technology
Industrial Strength Series - Applied Windows Workflow Foundation

As part of our Industrial Strength Series, Jon Flanders* of Pluralsight delivers his 4 day Applied WF intensive course which affords experienced .NET developers training in WF tools and services needed to add rich workflow capabilities to their ASP.NET and Smart Client applications as well as Web and Windows services.

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) was announced at the 2005 Professional Developers Conference as the platform for building workflow-enabled applications. As part of .NET 3.0, WF ships with Windows Vista and also runs on Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP.

WF allows developers to create dynamic, transparent applications with true object reuse and composition. WF provides the tools and services .NET developers need to add rich workflow capabilities to their ASP.NET and Smart Client applications as well as Web and Windows services. With the ability to fully involve business users and IT Pros in the use and monitoring of an application, WF stands to single-handedly change the way .NET programs are written in the future. This course provides fast-paced exposure to WF to get you started today, and is also provides information on using WF with the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) to build transparent services and smart clients tomorrow.

This course is designed for developers interested in ramping up quickly on the WF architecture, programming model, and other key concepts and features. Experience programming in C# using Visual Studio .NET is required.

* Jon Flanders is a trainer/consultant for Pluralsight US, author and MVP in BizTalk. Jon has authored and co-authored "Essential ASP" for Addison-Wesleyand Mastering Visual Studio.NET for O'Reilly, he has also been involved with Windows Workflow since its beta release, and currently has been working with Microsoft delivering jumpstart training for BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and BizTalk RFID. More information about Jon can be found on his blog at http://www.masteringbiztalk.com/blogs/jon/

What you should expect to learn:

This course will not only help you understand the architecture and design principles underlying WF, but also teach you the most practical aspects of beginning to use WF today. You’ll learn how to use WF to create rich Human Workflow applications that truly involve the business user as well as how to create transparent, maintainable application code. Coverage will include how to create workflows using sequence and State-machine workflow models as well as how to extend WF with custom activities and services. By the end of the course you should feel confident building, deploying and hosting workflows and creating custom activities.

Course Highlights:

  • Architecture
  • What is workflow
  • Runtime hosting
  • State-machine workflows
  • Integrating Business Rules into workflow scenarios
  • Creating custom workflow activities
  • Transactional programming and activity compensation
  • Using the "out of the box" workflow activities to build workflows
  • Integrating WF with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF, formerly "Indigo")
  • Dynamic updates of running workflows
  • Workflow designer hosting for rich workflow visualisations
  • Workflow tracking and persistence
  • Role-based security in workflows
  • Consuming web services from workflows
  • Publishing workflows as web services
  • Communication patterns between workflows and hosts
  • Understanding when to use workflow in your application

A few questions this course will answer:

  • How do I use the Windows Workflow Foundation to create simple and advanced workflows?
  • How does my workflow get managed during runtime and at idle times?
  • How can I make my workflow system reliable and resilient?
  • How do I communicate between a workflow and the runtime host or the workflow and other services?
  • How do I build State-Machine workflows?
  • How do I let users change running workflow instances?
  • How can I use workflow in my WCF application or service?
  • How do I extend the workflow foundation with custom activities?
  • How do I provide a rich design time experience for workflow developers and viewers?
  • How do I secure my workflow or limit access to certain operations or events?
  • When should I use Windows Workflow Foundation in my application?
  • How is Windows Workflow Foundation going to be used in other Microsoft products such as Office and BizTalk Server?
  • Can I use transactions in Windows Workflow Foundation, and how do I rollback changes that are not in a transaction?
  • What are some things I can do to make my workflows easier to maintain, more flexible and dynamically updateable?
|| Training > Industrial Strength Series > Applied Windows Workflow Foundation ||