Automating Business Processes With Sharepoint Workflows: Common Pitfalls And Solutions

Centralizing and Streamlining Workflows

Benefits of Automating Business Processes

Implementing workflows in SharePoint allows organizations to model business processes as a series of procedural steps. This enables the automation of repetitive manual tasks, enforcement of business rules, routing of documents, and notifications when certain conditions are met. Specific benefits include:

Increased efficiency – Automated workflows complete tasks faster and route documents without user intervention.
Improved compliance – Workflows consistently apply business rules and policies.
Enhanced visibility – Workflow status tracking provides insight into bottlenecks.
Reduced errors – Manual hand-offs are minimized, lowering the risk of human error.

Integrating Workflows with Existing Systems

SharePoint workflows can integrate with other core business systems via various connectivity options:

REST API – Call REST endpoints to interact with APIs, web services, and custom code.
Azure Logic Apps – Integrate with many cloud apps and services.
Power Automate – Connect to Office 365, Dynamics 365, OneDrive and more.
Power BI – Incorporate real-time reporting dashboards.

Key considerations when integrating workflows include:

Authentication methods – Workflows may need to authenticate to access other systems.
Error handling – Handle connection issues and faulty responses gracefully.
Rate limits – External services often limit API call frequency.

Choosing the Right Workflow Type

SharePoint Online offers multiple workflow design options:

Power Automate – No-code option suitable for basic flows.
SharePoint Designer – Robust browser-based visual designer for medium complexity.
Visual Studio – Fully custom workflows with advanced logic coded in Visual Studio.

Consider requirements around flexibility, integration, maintenance, and skill level when selecting between options.

Configuring Workflows

Common Workflow Configuration Issues

Improperly configured workflows fail or behave unexpectedly. Common misconfigurations include:

Excessive permissions – Granting broader access than needed may enable unauthorized actions or content access.
Inadequate error handling – Uncaught errors cause sudden workflow failures versus graceful handling.
Inefficient polling settings – Overly frequent polling consumes excessive resources to check conditions.
Oversights with large lists – Settings that work fine for smaller lists may throttle or timeout for large lists.

Handling Errors and Exceptions

Workflows should anticipate and handle both temporary errors and more serious exceptions:

Transient errors – Network glitches or temporary service outages. Retry logic helps overcome these.
Persistent application exceptions – Invalid data, access denied. Requires fixes for underlying root causes.
Unhandled exceptions – Bugs, unforeseen edge cases. Needs observation, diagnosis and code fixes.

Logging error details supplements retry capability. Analyzing logs identifies systemic issues needing attention vs one-off exceptions.

Monitoring and Reporting on Workflows

Ongoing monitoring provides visibility into workflow health and performance. Monitoring approaches include:

Platform logging – Review error logs in Office 365 Admin portal and Activity Reports.
In-workflow reporting actions – Log to list, generate emails with custom data.
Power BI integration – Dashboards with workflow execution analytics.

Effectively interpreting monitoring output requires understanding expected vs abnormal behavior and key performance benchmarks.

Optimizing Workflow Performance

Preventing Workflow Throttling

SharePoint throttles rapid workflow actions to prevent overloading services. Symptoms of throttling include delayed task execution and timeouts. Techniques to avoid throttling:

Improve indexing on lookup columns to optimize filters and joins.
Add delays between operations executing in quick succession.
Perform batch operations asynchronously via Power Automate or Azure Logic Apps.

Ensuring Sufficient Resources

Complex workflows with many operations or external connections can consume substantial resources:

Memory – Data caches reduce retrievals but consume memory.
CPU – Encryption, decompression, lookups demand CPU cycles.
Storage – Log files, attachments, and task data require storage.
Network – External API calls utilize network bandwidth.

Scale up SharePoint infrastructure when workflows impact responsiveness. Proactively monitor usage metrics.

Tuning Query Performance

Workflows often query or filter SharePoint lists and libraries. Slow queries introduces delays. Tactics for faster queries:

Ensure columns leveraged in WHERE clauses are indexed.
Minimize joined data sources which increases query complexity.
Avoid unfiltered queries on lists with millions of items.
Cache frequently used queries locally when possible.

Test workflows with realistic data volumes to uncover baseline query performance.

Securing Sensitive Data

Controlling Access Permissions

Validate that workflows only access documents and list items users are authorized to view. Techniques include:

Using impersonation step to safely elevate permissions of a workflow.
Configuring item-level permissions to restrict confidential documents.
Querying list items filtering on user department as a security trim.

Conduct periodic access reviews to ensure permissions remain aligned with policy.

Encrypting Sensitive Data

Encryption mechanisms prevent unauthorized access to confidential workflow data elements including:

Encrypt sensitive workflow parameters stored in definitions.
Encrypt form fields, list columns containing confidential personal data.
Enable SQL encryption for high value SharePoint content databases.

Validate configured encryption types and strengths match organizational standards.

Auditing Workflow Executions

The ability to audit workflows post-execution ensures accountability. Auditing approaches include:

Enabling diagnostic logging captures detailed workflow execution logs.
Tracing origin user identity associated with every workflow invocation.
Alerting administrators of unauthorized access attempts.

Conduct periodic audits by sampling workflows using filtering criteria like user, timing, or resource accessed.

Debugging Workflows

Identifying the Root Cause

Determining the root cause requires methodically isolating where and why a failure occurs:

Review monitoring tools for errors proximal to failure.
Examine workflow logic around last successful step.
Check for changes to related systems/services relied upon.
Retest previously functioning flows to pinpoint new defects.

Share knowledge of defects and fixes across governance and development.

Reading Workflow Execution Logs

Viewing timestamped execution logs helps reconstruct workflow failures or anomalies. Key to review:

Error messages indicate failure types preventing progression.
Warnings may highlight inconsistent data values.
Elapsed times identify performance bottlenecks.
Dropped connections signal integration issues.

Scrutinizing combined log data exposes scenarios causing unreliable behavior.

Testing Incremental Changes

Isolate the impact of configuration changes via incremental testing:

First validate unaltered workflows function properly.
Next introduce each change separately retesting functionality.
Address issues arising from individual changes before proceeding.
Finally test workflow with full set of changes enacted.

Incremental validation localizes the scope modified during troubleshooting.

Conclusion

Key Takeaways

Smoothly operating workflows avoid common pitfalls around configuration, security, performance, and reliability. Key guiding principles include:

Design resilient error handling upfront knowing failures will occur.
Right size infrastructure to match workflow processing and storage needs.
Assess permission models ensuring least privilege access.
Benchmark throughput early identifying capacity constraints.
Institutionalize monitoring, audit, and debugging practices.

Next Steps for Implementation

Realizing benefits from workflow automation requires upfront analysis and planning:

Document critical processes and requirements enabling workflows.
Perform capability gap assessment of proposed vs ideal future state.
Prioritize developments delivering greatest business value.
Institute governance model supporting secure innovation.

Staying mindful of past failures guides future workflow success.