Getting the list of running workflow instance

Question

Hi,

We are working on a project that use Windows Workflow
Service. We are trying to have access to the list of running workflow instance.
So far we have investigated many way to read it including powershell and
directly from the persistence store.

We are wondering what would be the best practice in regard
to this.

Answer 1

Are you using AppFabric or working with just WF?

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If this answers your question, please use the "Answer" button to say so | Ben Cline

Answer 2

Yes we are using AppFabric

Answer 3

Using PowerShell for this is fine. You can use Get-ASAppServiceInstance (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee767624%28v=WS.10%29.aspx).

How are you using the returned information? Is it in a real-time display of workflow progress or something else? It is possible to call a PowerShell script from a .NET application using a runspace.

Thanks,

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If this answers your question, please use the "Answer" button to say so | Ben Cline

Answer 4

Thanks for the answer !

So we were on the right direction.

One of the other challenge that we face is that the WPF
Client will require the following information that is stored inside a workflow
instance :

      -Some DataContract ( Workflow variable or Workflow Argument )

               We were investigating using a custom PersistanceParticipant, but not sure that
                this is the best practice.

       -Current activity

               We have found that we were able to see the last bookmark that was hit, but again
                 still  not sure what will be the best practice.

Thanks again !

Answer 5

here is an overview of our system

Answer 6

Basically what we are trying to do is to find a way to continue
a workflow whiteout even knowing it exist, we also need to find what is the
next step(Activity), and what was the result of the previous step().  

Answer 7

Personally I think you would be better off writing out workflow instance data to SQL so you can report on it. This would be simpler than calling a PowerShell script. With PowerShell it would only be a point in time and you would not always have the latest information.  

You could write out the tracking events to SQL in a custom tracking participant like you were thinking to accomplish this. Regarding tracking information about steps in the workflow, I am not sure if there is an API to provide this or not. You might ask the same question in the WF 4 forum to see if they can give you more WF-specific details: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wfprerelease/threads

Thanks,

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If this answers your question, please use the "Answer" button to say so | Ben Cline

Answer 8

Thanks