Wondering if you can implement workflows in SharePoint? We have great news for you – you can. In fact, SharePoint has advanced features for workflow and business process automation that can help streamline and simplify the operations of your company.
But before you rush off to bring your organization’s workflows into SharePoint, read on to learn the crucial steps you need to follow if you want the process automation changes that you make to be successful.
Put It to Paper
The most important step before implementing workflows in SharePoint is to identify your business processes before you translate them to SharePoint. This will involve conversations with business processes SMEs and your key stakeholders along with several drawings of the workflow (on whiteboards, paper, or Microsoft Visio). This may seem painful, but it will ultimately be less of a headache to implement when everyone can agree on how to enact the various steps ahead of time.
The best way to simplify the creation of workflows in SharePoint is to make sure that you have well-documented requirements. Consider what the workflow is trying to solve, who is involved at every step, and whether there are any loops, reviews or other complications. Put another way, SharePoint is the tool you use to implement your workflows, not the strategy that determines how you implement them.
Find Pressure Points
It’s also important to identify any points of failure that can occur in the workflow so that you can plan for alternate arrangements. For example, if a key person in the workflow goes on vacation, is there someone else who’s able to replace them temporarily, or does the process need to stall until they return?
At each touch point, make sure that there’s a backup, whether it’s a coworker who can act as a substitute or a way of automatically approval of a request after a set time period. Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of planning only perfect workflows so you need to consider some of the more realistic and imperfect situations that may happen.
Take Ownership
Someone from the business side of your organization should own the workflow, regularly discuss its evolution with users and key stakeholders, and be available to work with the development team in an ongoing capacity to discuss possible changes to the process in the future. This person should be able to comment on any shortcomings of the current workflow, as well as provide feedback as to how it’s going once the new workflow has been implemented. This governance is important for both simple workflows that change infrequently, like vacation time approvals, and complex processes that are still evolving.
Final Thoughts
The best way to get going when implementing workflows in SharePoint is incrementally. Start with a step or two and then add additional ones. Select a smaller group of people as your pilot team who will test and validate things before the workflow is released to the entire organization.
If you try to create your workflow in SharePoint overnight, you’ll have a much harder time with things.
SharePoint is simply the tool for implementing workflows, not a panacea. If your planning is insufficient and the new workflow is unpopular or inadequate, the real problem is that the business process hasn’t yet been fully refined.
