Since the release of Workflow Conductor 1.5, I’ve been writing about all the great new features available to workflow designers when creating SharePoint workflows: things like cross-site collection features, impersonation, and new Widgets to help manage users and groups. This post is dedicated to all those SharePoint and workflow administrators out there – we didn’t forget you! Workflow Conductor 1.5 includes a ton of new features that enhance your ability to centrally manage workflows and Workflow Conductor features. Keep reading to find out how to customize workflow task e-mails, schedule workflow deployment, limit workflow designers, and much more.

Time to fire up your upgraded or free 30-day trial version of Workflow Conductor 1.5 and put on your “administrator” hat – this time, we’ll be hanging out with the Workflow Conductor Control Panel in Central Administration.

Limit Workflow Designers

In previous versions of Workflow Conductor, anyone with at least the SharePoint “Design” permission set could start Conductor Studio and create workflows. This option is still available, but what if you want to limit the list of workflow designers to a select few without changing what SharePoint designers can do? Workflow Conductor 1.5 lets you have your cake and eat it too. Check out the new Workflow Designers configuration page in the Workflow Conductor Control Panel in Central Administration:

Schedule Workflow Deployments

Not only can you limit who can deploy workflows, you can also define when workflows get deployed, with the new Workflow Deployment Schedule settings. Continue to let designers deploy workflows right from Conductor Studio at design time, or restrict workflow deployment to a time of your choosing.

Active Directory Settings

Remember those new user and group management Widgets? The Workflow Conductor Control Panel lets you pre-configure Active Directory paths that those widgets can use so you can control who can do what in Active Directory. Pre-configured Active Directory LDAP paths in the Workflow Conductor Control Panel will be listed in the Active Directory Widgets – but only to the users you specify. You can also let designers enter their own LDAP paths in AD Widgets – or not, we let you choose.

Customize Task E-mail Templates

In previous versions of Workflow Conductor, you were able to customize the initial task assignment e-mail that was sent out for task Widgets like Request Approval and Request Feedback. Now you can also customize the appearance and content of the e-mails for task reassignment and change requests, all in one convenient location (no digging around in the file system). Not only that, but we’ve added enhanced lookup capabilities that let the task e-mail show unique content for each workflow instance.

Centrally Manage Conductor Workflow Solutions

Now all workflows deployed with Workflow Conductor can be managed right in the Workflow Conductor Control Panel. Retract solutions, redeploy them, remove them from the solution store – all from one central location.

Improved Reporting Features

Last, but certainly not least, we’ve made it even easier for administrators to review workflow history logs for the entire farm. We’ve enhanced the View Workflow Status page with more options for sorting, grouping, filtering, and exporting workflow history data.

There are many more Workflow Conductor Control Panel features to explore, so download your free 30-day trial version of Workflow Conductor 1.5 today. Need help getting up and running? Review our installation (or upgrade) instructions in the online product documentation, or post your question in the Workflow Conductor Forum.

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