I am planning to write a windows forms application that requires multilevel approval in order to process something. Like
Creator (Requester)
->
Review (Reviews the order and escalates to next level)
->
Clerk (first level approval)
->
Manager (Final approval)
->
Back to creator
Once Creator/Requester fills out a form and submits, I wanted to start a workflow which automatically fires emails and based on response it sends it to the next level.
Question: I never worked on Windows workflow, is WF suitable for this type of application? Is there any sample(not exactly like this) available?
That sounds like a process orchestration that WF4 is well suited for. In general I would recommend using an IIS hosed workflow service and let that take care of all processing.
Related
I have code that uses Entity Framework to treat data (retrieves data from multiple tables then performs operations on it before saving in a SQL database). The code was supposed to run when a button is clicked in an MVC web application that I created. But now the client wants the data treatment to run automatically every day at a set time (like an SSIS package). How do I go about this?
But now the client wants the data treatment to run automatically every day at a set time (like an SSIS package). How do I go about this?
In addition to adding a job scheduler to your MVC application as #Pac0 suggests, here are a couple of other options:
Leave the code in the MVC project and create an API endpoint that you can invoke on some sort of schedule. Give the client a PowerShell script that calls the API and let them take it from there.
Or
Refactor the code into a .DLL or copy/paste it into a console application that can be run on a schedule using the Windows Scheduler, SQL Agent or some other external scheduler.
You could use some tool/lib that does this for you. I could recommend Hangfire, it works fine (there are some others, I have not tried them).
The example on their homepage is pretty explicit :
RecurringJob.AddOrUpdate(
() => Console.WriteLine("Recurring!"),
Cron.Daily);
The above code needs to be executed once when your application has started up, and you're good to go. Just replace the lambda by a call to your method.
Adapt the time parameter on what you wish, or even better: make it configurable, because we know customers like to change their mind.
Hangfire needs to create its own database, usually it will stay pretty small for this kind of things. You can also monitor if the jobs ran well or not, and check no the hangfire server some useful stats.
We have a process during new hire onboarding that requires managers and/or ops teams to spend time creating and giving permissions to employees. Recently, we have been thinking that it would be nice for us to automate this process, i.e., through a script of sorts.
A good indication that someone has recently joined our team (under some organization), would be if it exists, for our Active Directory to post some event to some server.
So my question is, does AD have support for hooks or any sort of automation that developers can tap into?
See this about
Active Directory creating an event upon user creation.
Then you can attach a task to the event. This blog entry explains in a detailed way how to pass parameters to the powershell script defined in the task - it involves manipulating the xml export of the task itself to insert the XPath query of an event detail.
Or, depending on the size of your organization, you could query a dynamic group in which all user objects are retrieved, and work on the delta from a previous run.
I have a workflow like this as a Azure Logic App:
Read from Azure Table -> Process it in a Function -> Send Data to SQL Server -> Send an email
Currently we can check if the previous action ended with an error and based on that we do not execute any further steps.
Is it possible in Logic Apps to perform a Rollback of actions when one of the steps goes wrong? Meaning can we undo all the steps to the beginning when something in step 3 goes wrong, for example.
Thanks in advance.
Regards.
Currently there is no support for rollback in Logic Apps (as they are not transnational).
Note that Logic Apps provide out-of-the-box resiliency against intermittent errors (retry strategies), which should minimize execution failures.
You can add custom handling of errors (e.g. following your example, if something goes in step 3, you can explicitly handle the failure and add rollback steps). Take a look at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/logic-apps/logic-apps-exception-handling for details. You
Depending on whether steps in your logic app are idempotent you can also make use of the resubmit feature. It allows you to re-trigger the run with same trigger contents with which the original run instance was invoked. Take a look at https://www.codit.eu/blog/2017/02/logic-apps-resubmit-considerations/ for a good overview of this feature.
I have a very critial business application presently running using Winforms.
The application is a very core UI shell. It accepts input data, calls a webservice on my server to do the computation, displays the results on the winforms app and finally send a print stream to the printer.
Presently the application is deployed using Click-once.
Moving forward, I am trying to contemplate wheather I should move the application into a Silverlight application. Couple of reasons I am thinking silverlight.
Gives clients the feel that it is a cloud based solution.
Can be accessed from any PC. While the clickonce app is able to do this as well, they have to install an app, and when updates are available they have to click "Yes" to update.
The application presently has a drop down list of customers, this list has expanded to over 3000 records. Scrolling through the list is very painful. With Silverlight I am thinking of the auto complete ability.
Out of the browser - this will be handy for those users who use the app daily.
I haven't used Silverlight previous hence looking for some expert advice on a few things:
Printing - does silverlight allow sending raw print data to the printer. The application prints to a Zebra Thermal label printer. I have to send raw bytes to the printer with the commands. Can this be done with SL, or will it always prompt the "Print" dialog?
Out of browser - when SL apps are installed as out of browser, how to updates come through, does the app update automatically or is the user prompted to opt for update?
Printing -- using the PrintDocument API your user will be prompted for a print dialog. Currently using that API there is no way to suppress this. It isn't ideal for high-volume thermal situations (like pharmacies, shipping warehouses, etc.). You could use the trusted application mode and peek out into COM and do whatever you want with the printer.
The update happens when the application asks for it. There is an API to use and, once called, if an update exists it is downloaded -- no prompt to the user as an option. If an update is found you can alert the user to restart or that on the next restart they will have the updated application.
Autocomplete is not something that can only be done in Silverlight. Your ClickOnce app is already out-of-browser. And printing via raw bytes to a thermal printer is something that would not be easily engineered in Silverlight.
Not trying to sound negative, but in sum it sounds like you're better off simply working on enhancing the app that you already have.
I am currently running a SL3 project where we are in a highly iterative development mode with about 25 active test customers. I am making small changes at a clip of about 4 new builds per day. It is important to know this application is mission critical line of business for these 25 people, it is the tool they use all day to do their work so they are using it constantly and often launch their browser and the app in the morning and never close it until the end of the day.
The challenge is that when I make an update to the application I have no clean way to notify the users, in most cases this is ok as it is rare that I introduce a data contract change or something that would be a classic 'breaking' change to the app/service. Users keep plugging along and will get the change next time they refresh.
Right now we have resorted to emailing everyone and telling them to force refresh or close the browser and log back in.
Surely there is a better way...
Right now my train of thought is to have a method on the server that compares client xap versions and determines if the client being used is the most up to date, if so I will notify the user and make them update.
What have you done to solve this problem?
One way of doing it is to use a push mechanism (I used Kaazing Websoocket Gateway but any would do). When a new version of the XAP is released a message (either manually entered into the system by admin or automated triggered by XAP file change event) would be sent to all the clients. In the simplest scenario some notification would be shown to a user (telling him that a new version is released and the application needs to refresh) and then the app would refresh (by simply reloading the page) saving user's state if necessary.
If I would do this I would just keep it simple. A configuration value in web.config and a corresponding service method that simply returns that value (the value itself could be anything, but a counter is probably wise). Then you could have your Silverlight app poll that service method at regular intervals. Whenever the value changes (which you would do manually when you deploy a new version), just pop up a dialog telling the user to refresh the browser or log in/out. This way you don't have to force them to refresh every time. If you go with the idea of comparing xap file versions they will always be required to refresh, even for non-breaking changes.
If you want to take it further you could come up with some sort of mechanism to distinguish between different severity levels. For instance, if the new config value would contain the string "update_forced", you could force the users to reload the app by logging them out automatically (a little harsh, perhaps). If it contains the string "update_recommended", just show a little icon at the top right corner saying that there is a new version and that they should upgrade in their own time.
Granted, this was targeted at Silverlight 3, but with the PollingDuplex client and such in the newer versions of Silverlight, you could publish an "Update Now" bit to the clients, and build a mechanism in the client to alert the user that there is an update that is now out... that they should update it shortly, etc. You may even be able, through serialization and such, to save the state that they are in when they close the app to reload it.
We've done stuff similar with a LOB app that we built, so that as users are changing things, the rest of the userbase sees those changes immediately. Next up will be putting the flags in to change authorization and upgrades "on the fly" if you will.