Workflow Action examples.

Call Web Service: Attaching a file from a Document Library to a List

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 19:04:08 GMT

You can use the Microsoft Web service http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/lists.lists.addattachment.aspx to attach the current file the workflow is running on to a list item within the list specified in the Web service SOAP configuration.

Example

Below is a List with one item and no attachment

Below is a screenshot of the Shared Documents library containing the item to attach to the list:

Here we are creating a workflow on the Shared Documents library with a "Call Web Service" action configured as follows:

In this example the listName and listItemID are the ID and List Name of the target item where you would like the attachment added.

SOAP Example

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
     <soap:Body>
         <AddAttachment xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/">
             <listName>CAS-06699-LRR5</listName>
             <listItemID>1</listItemID>
             <fileName>{ItemProperty:FileLeafRef}</fileName>
             <attachment>[FileData]</attachment>
         </AddAttachment>
     </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

Where {ItemProperty:FileLeafRef} is the document name inserted reference and [FileData] is the file byte array parameter.

Go here to see more tutorials on other examples of the "Call Web Service" action - http://connect.nintex.com/files/folders/tutorials/tags/web+service/default.aspx.

Call Web Service: Query to Find All Rows for a Specific Due Date

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:44:26 GMT

This was an example whereby a customer had a working query that tried to find all the rows for a specific “due date”.

The method used for building this example was to first create the same query using the "Query List" action. You can then select the CAML editor and copy the CAML query into your "Call Web Service" action. In this example, we used the Calendar list and queried for items where the title is equal to test and the start date is a date variable which was created using the "Calculate a Date" action.

In switching to the CAML editor you can cut and paste this directly into your Call Web Service Query element.

     <Where>
         <And>
             <Eq>
                 <FieldRef Name="Title" />
                 <Value Type="Text">test</Value>
             </Eq>
             <Eq>
                 <FieldRef Name="EventDate" />
                 <Value Type="DateTime">{WorkflowVariable:testdate}</Value>
             </Eq>
         </And>
     </Where>

In this case, it is recommended to try building the date using the "Calculate a Date" action then specify this variable in your "Call Web Service" action as well. Also, try leaving the viewName section blank as this is an optional input.

If that doesn’t help, you can try a more simplistic query first then add to it if the first part returns the expected results.

Here is the GetListItems SOAP used when testing a similar query which worked as expected.

<GetListItems xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/">
             <listName>Calendar</listName>
             <viewName></viewName>
             <query>
<Query>
     <Where>
         <And>
             <Eq>
                 <FieldRef Name="Title" />
                 <Value Type="Text">test</Value>
             </Eq>
             <Eq>
                 <FieldRef Name="EventDate" />
                 <Value Type="DateTime">{WorkflowVariable:testdate}</Value>
             </Eq>
         </And>
     </Where>
</Query>
</query>
             <viewFields></viewFields>
             <rowLimit></rowLimit>
             <queryOptions><QueryOptions/></queryOptions>
             <webID></webID>
         </GetListItems>

Please include all the elements as described on the Microsoft Web site http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/lists.lists.getlistitems.aspx. Also for your reference is the "Calculate a Date" action configuration.

Build Dynamic String: Using an Inline Function to Format a Date

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:56:07 GMT

To format a date you can use the inline function fn-FormatDate in a Build Dynamic String action.

fn-FormatDate
Represents a date time value in text of a specific format.

Example
fn-FormatDate({WorkflowVariable:MyDate}, d)

Arguments
MyDate is a variable containing a date value.

Format string Text describing how the date time value should be formatted. Information on how to format the value can be found on this page: Standard Date and Time Format Strings and this page Custom Date and Time Format Strings.

Example

Where ‘datevar’ is a workflow date variable containing the date you would like to convert and ‘result’ is a workflow text variable.

Please see this page for all the different date formats: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/az4se3k1.aspx.

Call Web Service: Opening List Attachment URLs from an Email Notification in Edit Mode

Anonymous — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:07:05 GMT

The following workflow was designed to loop through multiple List attachments, capture their URL, then embed them into a “Request Approval” action so that approvers can open the attachments from the email notification in Edit mode then modify them without having to access the List item directly from SharePoint.

Declared 4 workflow variables using the variable types as shown below:

Here’s a screenshot of the workflow structure:

The actions are configured as follows:

The “Call web service” is using the Web_Url lookup then the /_vti_bin/Lists.asmx extension which is a mandatory field that represents the full URL of the SOAP Web service to call. Once a URL has been entered, the Refresh button can be pressed to define the available methods.

The parameters are stored within the var_AttachmentXML workflow variable.

The “Regular expression” action removes the XPath namespace (e.g. xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/") as leaving it in would make it more difficult to write the XPath expression.

The “Query XML” action is querying the XML variable using the XPath expression //attachments/attachment to pull out the value inside the Attachment XML node for each Attachment node then storing them in our defined collection variable var_CollectionURLs.

The “For Each” action is used to store the var_CollectionURLs variable data within a text variable to be used in the “Build Dynamic String” action for each attachment.

The “Build Dynamic String” action uses the var_AttachmentURL data and converts it into a URL that can be embedded into the email notification. (Note that this is a part of the “For Each” action, so it will continue to loop through all List attachments.)

{WorkflowVariable:var_AttachmentLinks} à this is being included so that the previous loop’s data is not overwritten

<a href="{Common:WebUrl}/_layouts/nintexworkflow/opendocforedit.aspx?doc={WorkflowVariable:var_AttachmentURL}&page={Common:WebUrl}&close=true">{WorkflowVariable:var_AttachmentURL}</a> à This string builds the URL so that it can be opened in Edit Mode within the email notification. Additionally, it includes HTML tags so that the URL will be displayed as a hyperlink. (This is really necessary if spaces were included in your site/list name as spaces will sometimes break hyperlinks.

The “Request Approval” action includes the var_AttachmentLinks within the “Edit Approval Required Notification” body which will now reflect all attachment links. Again, these links will open in Edit Mode from the email making this process easier for approvers.

Note that you will want to also update the Approvers field on this action so that it reflects the correct approvers.

Web Request: Copying a Document and Updating meta data (updatelistitems)

Peter D — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:11:30 GMT

Using the Web Request action you can use the PUT command to copy a document to a remote farm and then use the ‘UpdateListItems’ web service to update any associated meta data.

Here is how I configured this in my test environment.

I had 2 document libraries both with the same name, each in a different farm.

The first Web Request action was configured as follows:

The URL is the URL to the destination farm with the new document name also included. It is recommended you store this URL to a workflow text variable and then pass this to your web request actions, as it will be used in both.

This action will copy the current item to the destination farm document library with a title of “test1.doc”.

I then used another Web Request to update the associated meta data (in this case a field named ‘data’) calling the web service ‘UpdateListItems’.

The URL in this case is the destination farm URL with /_vti_bin/Lists.asmx added to the end.

The SOAP action is: http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/UpdateListItems

The SOAP used was:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">

<soap:Body>

<Batch OnError="Continue" PreCalc="TRUE" ListVersion="0">

<Method ID="1" Cmd="Update">

<Field Name="ID">1</Field>

<Field Name="FileRef">http://farm2/peter/CAS06438V6FC/test1.doc</Field>

<Field Name="data">{ItemProperty:data}</Field>

</Method>

</Batch>

</updates>

</UpdateListItems>

</soap:Body>

</soap:Envelope>

The ID field will always be 1, however the FIleRef must be the URL used in your first web request action where you used the PUT command.

The 2^nd web request action is only required if you need to copy any meta data associated with your document.

For more information on the ‘UpdateListItems’ web service please see: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/lists.aspx.