Association Form For Workflow

What is Association Form?

An Association Form is required to capture user input before associating the workflow with a list or library.

An Initiation Form is another type of form that is used to capture information before running the workflow instance on an item.

Example Scenario

We can use an Association Forms on Reusable Workflows that have various parameters for execution. For example, in an Expense approval scenario we can set an Administrator Email to be captured on list association.



Scenario

We are creating an Admin Notifier Workflow. The flow is simple; the following describes it:

1. Notify the Administrator of each Expense Approval
2. The workflow can be associated with various department lists having a different Email

You can combine this with the previous workflow here.

Step 1: Create a new list named "Expense" with the following columns.



Step 2: Open SharePoint Designer and create a new "Reusable Workflow".



Step 3: Click on the toolbar.



You will get the following dialog box.



Click on the "Add" button.



Choose the "Association" option, enter the Field name and click the "Next" button.



In the page that appears you can enter a default value for the email and click the "Finish" button.

Step 4: Save and Publish the workflow.



Step 5: You can go to a List then select "List Settings" > "Workflow Settings" > "Add a workflow".



You can see our new workflow there since it is a "Reusable Workflow".

Enter the workflow name for the association, check the "Start" option and click the "Next" button.

You will see the following Association Form.



Enter the Email respective to the List and click the "Save" button. This demonstrates the simple usage of the Association Form.

In advanced scenarios, we can use the Association Parameter in Email activity.

References

http://bit.ly/1cOtHZi

Summary

In this article we have explored how to use Association Forms.