SharePoint and Frontpage

by Steve Richards · Published September 15, 2005 · Updated March 29, 2014

FrontPage investments

Front page has made big improvements in compliance with web standards

Dataview web part, used to integrate diverse data sources and present them through SharePoint

WYSIWYG design experience
conditional formatting
static and ad-hoc sorting filtering and grouping
integrate data from SQL server, OLEDB, XML, SOAP, server scripts, RSS, business data catalogue and combine them into single views
integration with all the different types of lists in SharePoint
the demonstrations showed very simple creation of views and forms from tables and joined tables without any code

Workflow

rule based designer for no code workflows
composes workflows from pre-existing workflow components and custom actions
workflows modelled as events, conditions and actions
workflows are associated with specific lists, I think this means not with a template, ie the association is with a specific provisioned instance of a list
rapid application development and deployment
positioned for minor variations to the simple standard workflows
visual studio is for complex workflows

example workflow actions

assign a custom task
send an email
create, update or delete a list item
collect feedback
send for approval
wait for a timer
wait for a data change
custom actions can be written and installed on the SharePoint server, the front page client can they see this and include it in new workflows
more actions are being developed

Workflow demo, key points:

first it seems a real shame that the workflow designer is not a web application that is provided as part of WSS itself, rather than the overly complex FrontPage which many enterprises will not want users to go anywhere near
all of the workflow capabilities that you expect would be there for simple workflows, particularly nice is the way to extract data from other WSS lists, or AD queries based on condition data that is extracted from the current list item that the workflow is acting on
to build more complex workflows though I can image a rats nest of additional list items being created and then further workflows acting on them etc.
as with all of these extensions that you would expect to be implemented many thousands of times, there is always a concern that upgrades might break them, or at least they create a significant testing burden.