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Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) Overview

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Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) provides a programming model, in-process workflow engine and re-hostable designer to implement long-running processes as workflows within .NET applications. Workflows are built using activities, which define units of work. These activities are composed together into a tree of activities that are then executed by the runtime. Workflows can be created using the workflow designer hosted inside of Visual Studio or in code [[XAML]].  The workflow designer can be hosted in a .Net application for an end user to edit workflows.

Getting Started with WF

There are many good resources for getting started with WF. The .NET Framework Developer Center for WF (on MSDN) has many good resources. There are also some introductory screencasts here, and two good whitepapers in the MSDN Library: The Workflow Way: Understanding Windows Workflow Foundation and A Developer's Introduction to Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) in .NET 4. The WF MSDN documentation contains a Getting Started Tutorial which walks through the basic steps of creating workflows and hosting them. There are also hands-on labs for WF. They are available as part of the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 Training Kit on the Microsoft Download Center, (which includes labs for many areas of .NET 4 and VS other than WF), and are also available integrated within Visual Studio from the Ron Jacobs MSDN blog.

WF Community Resources

Forums

Blogs

Screencasts

WF Wiki Pages

The following links are articles in the TechNet Wiki (the site that you are on right now). The Wiki allows you to add your personal knowledge and expertise to a public forum. If an existing topic needs work, and you have the expertise, please fix it. (For example, if you know of a good WF resource that is not linked on this overview page, please feel free to add it in the appropriate section, or create a new section!) Or if you have knowledge that would be useful to others, create a new page to share it.

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