SharePoint 2010 Workflows Retires - What Does It Mean and what’s Next?

SharePoint 2010 Workflows Retires – What Does It Mean and what’s Next?

Pegged by the need to consolidate information and enhance end to end collaboration between teams, Microsoft rolled out a document management platform in the form of SharePoint. As an intranet, the sole purpose of SharePoint is to introduce seamless collaboration among teams within an organization.

To be specific, SharePoint ties up with Microsoft 365 to streamline document management abilities giving you the ease to function as a single unit. What makes SharePoint an efficient management tool is – it supports data of all formats and unifies operations in an organization. Since its launch, Microsoft has always been active in assessing the platform and releasing updates to ensure optimal productivity.

A recent evaluation of the offerings of Microsoft 365 revealed that it’s time to replace the SharePoint workflow with modern tools and technologies. For the uninitiated, this isn’t any update in the existing infrastructure but a total burnout. Meaning that starting August 1, 2020, SharePoint 2010 workflow would cease to exist for new tenant and November 1, 2020 SharePoint 2010 workflow service will be removed from existing tenant. For the users who have done SharePoint Implementation, it’s time to move the alternative, or to be precise, Power Automate.

What’s next in the Microsoft 365 Family?

The decision that SharePoint workflow would retire in the coming month, organizations that are actively leveraging the platform, now needs to find a different platform to house their documents and continue working without any hassle.

The change is meant for all of the environment and includes Government Community Cloud (GCC) High and Department of Defense as well. The question that arises here is which other resources offered by Microsoft 365 can effectively meet the needs, let alone improve it.

Microsoft, while making the statement, stated that the existing tenants can effectively migrate their infrastructure to Microsoft’s Power Automate and benefit from its flawless services. Power automate is not just an alternative to the SharePoint workflow but an enhanced version with industry-best tools. Another alternative here would be the transition to the updated version of SharePoint, i.e. SharePoint 2013. However, this one would soon follow the same process of retirement in the near future.

Read more: Streamline processes & tasks to boost your business productivity, with Microsoft Power Automate!
In order to avoid the hassle, it is best to move to the Power Automate platform. Even though the migration process has to be done manually, the perks would be a lot more as compared to the SharePoint 2013 infrastructure.

Impact of the change

Now that you are well aware of the decision and also what you should to minimize the effects, the next question to pop up is what changes you can expect, once the move is made.

While not much would be affected, yet the few things that you must be aware of include:

Approvals: Used to get approval for a document from the different members of the team, the built-in workflow of approvals are likely to be removed from the updated version of the system.
Collect Signatures: Apparently, the collect Signature workflow would be affected by the migration. Earlier, this allowed one to collect digital signatures from members within the team.
Collect Feedback: The sole purpose of the workflow is used to distribute a document to a number of people, gather their feedback, and send the same to the person who initiated the document in the first place.
Three-state: The majority of the business processes use this workflow to keep track of the issues related to project tasks, sales leads, and customer queries.
Classic pages publishing Approval:Primarily an automated version of the Approval workflow that itself shares the documents to the ideal person seeking approval.

One thing to note here is that if you choose to move to the SharePoint 2013 platform, the above changes would not stand. Only if you choose to migrate to the Power Automate portal, will the aforementioned workflows be affected. The fact that experts suggest moving to the Power Automate portal, workflows are bound to affect.

How would you know that you are using SharePoint 2010 Workflow?

Using the SharePoint 2010 Workflow or thinking about moving your automation processes to the Power Automate platform, it is best to start with the SharePoint Modernization Tool. The scanner is designed keeping in mind the need to extract information about the legacy systems. What this means is once you run the tool, you would be able to perform an in-depth scan of the workflow and trace the legacy tenants to understand the workflow usage.

The results obtained by the scanner include:

A comparison between the SharePoint 2010 and the SharePoint 2013 workflow, outlining the legacy workflow in both of the platforms.
The name of the lists as well as the sites that use the legacy workflow.
Reports on the distribution of the custom as well as the out-of-box usage of the legacy workflow.
A score that outlines how you can migrate your workflow to power automate and the actions that need to be deleted to facilitate the same.

The overall assessment allows the admin to have a consolidated view of the system and work towards the migration process with ease.

Not sure if you can do the above yourself?

Reach out to us at Stridely Solutions.

Equipped with a team of software nerds and system engineers, we excel in helping organizations migrate their existing system to the Power Automate platform.

Stridely Solutions offers end to end consultation solutions to enterprises who aren’t sure about which platform to choose. Our experts will conduct an assessment of your existing infrastructure, outlining the workflows that need to be changed. Also, we provide a proposal on the alternative which would deploy Nintex or Power Automate to account for the transformation.

Stridely Solutions has years of expertise working on the Power Automate platform and are well versed in the ins and out of the system. We have helped multiple companies migrate their workflow automation process to Power Automate without any disruptions.

Conclusion

Having said all of the above, it’s time for you to decide. Whether you wish to move the system to the SharePoint 2013 workflow or take the leap and embrace the Power Automate platform. Either is the case, expert help is of paramount importance and we are here, happy to assist.