Since the release of Workflow Conductor 1.5 last month, I’ve been writing about all the exciting new features in this version. In case you missed the previous posts: so far, we’ve covered:

• Copy a List Item To Another Site Collection (and Other Cross-Site Collection Features)
• Impersonate Another User in Your SharePoint Workflow
• Manage Users and Groups in SharePoint Workflows with User Provisioning Widgets
• Customize Workflow Task E-mails, Schedule Workflow Deployment, Limit Workflow Designers, and More
• Create a SharePoint Workflow to Loop Through All Items in a List
• Test Drive Your SharePoint Workflow: Simulation Mode and other Workflow Start Options

I’ll be wrapping up this month-long series about Workflow Conductor 1.5 with a few of the updates to existing Workflow Conductor widgets and features. Without further ado…

New Date, String, and Mathematical Calculations

In Workflow Conductor 1.5, we’ve greatly expanded the functionality of the Calculate Widget to support 20 Microsoft Excel-style date, string, and mathematical functions. Functions can be combined and nested any way you want, to enhance your workflow logic. The new Calculate formula builder supports lookups, too, so your formula can adapt to current conditions.

Support for SQL Records and SQL Insert/Update/Delete Statements

Workflow Conductor has always had the ability to retrieve a single value from an external database using the Query Database Widget. With Workflow Conductor 1.5, you can now retrieve an entire record, and use that record to create new items in SharePoint lists. Also new in this release is support for insert, update, and delete statements, making it even easier to keep your SharePoint and external data in sync. As before, the Query Database Widget supports SQL Server, Oracle, OLEDB, and ODBC connections.

Even More Easy References!

We love making things easy, and Easy References are one of our favorite ways to easily customize workflows with values that are updated every time the workflow runs. Insert Easy References in task descriptions, task e-mails, and Widget properties – anywhere you see the lookup icon or Add Lookup button. For more on Easy References (and other types of lookups), take a look at this previous Conductor blog post or the Workflow Conductor online documentation. We have Easy Reference lookups for everything from the current time to the current item URL, with a dozen more added just for this release. For a complete list of Easy References, click here.

Now that you’ve read about all the new features, head on over to the Workflow Conductor product page to download a free 30-day trial so you can check them out for yourself.

Look for an announcement soon about Workflow Conductor 1.5 for SharePoint 2010 – coming later this month! I’m excited, are you??