08-02-04 10:50 PM
Hello,
[...]
>for approval and approvers will edit the file to approve/Reject. I want
>to automate this using HWS. Can I pass the document through the whole
>workflow from one approver to another and let them edit the file and
>post it back. What would be the best way to solve this. I am using .xls
>file . Not using Office 2003.
As I am sure you ahve noticed, tghe HWS activation schema allows to pass any
kind of data
in addition to the required HWS fields. However, HWS (and BizTalk) are not c
ontent management
products. This means that BizTalk (or HWS, built on top of BizTalk) is not t
he best way to store documents
and allow users to edit them.
So, in general, you should avoid passing Office documents to BizTalk if your
orchestration treats those
documents as "opaque" (i.e. does not look into the documents, just hands it
off to a port when asked).
If your orchestration treats documents as opaque, the best way to do this wo
uld be to pass a reference to
the document (perhaps an URL) and to store the document in a content managem
ent system.
A context management system could be as simple as a file share or as complex
as Windows Sharepoint Services.
Your orchestration could manipulate permissions on the content manangement s
oftware to deny read and/or write
so only whoever is required to read/change the document can effectively do s
o.
Provided that you treat Excel documents as opaque in your orchestration, thi
s design is superior since you send only
a few characters (the URL) instead of the whole payload (that you won't use
anyway). The performances on the BizTalk
site will be way better. Moreover, you do not copy the document around: ther
e is only one copy in the Content Management System.
WHen sending the Excel file to the orchestartion, the sender as still a copy
and so will all participants. It becomes harder to merge
changes, if any.
This being said, you could pass the whole Excel to the HWS action. Since .xs
l files are binary files,
you would have to encode it to pass it to the schedule (using base64 for ins
tance). Your orchestartion would
retrieve the data in base64 from the activation message (or task response me
ssage, depending on the step)
and you would then possibly hand off the document.
If your solution does not look inside Excel documents, I strongly discourage
you to send the Excel document to BizTalk.
Thanks.
-Gilles.
[ Post a follow-up to this message ]
| 
