SharePoint Workflow template shapes guide

This Visio action is the same as the Add a Comment action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Add a comment

Use this action to leave informative comments in the workflow designer for reference purposes. This is especially helpful when there are other users co-authoring the workflow. For example, if a variable in the current workflow doesn't have a user-friendly name, you use this action to add a comment to indicate what the variable does in the workflow.

This Visio action is the same as the Add Time to Date action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Add time to date

Use this action to add a specific time in minutes, hours, days, months, or years to a date, and store the output value as a variable. The date can be a current date, specific date, or a lookup.

This Visio action is the same as the Do Calculation action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Do calculation

Use this action to perform a calculation, such as add, subtract, multiply, or divide two values, and stores the output value in a variable.

This Visio action is the same as the Log to History List action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Log to history list

Use this action to log a message about the workflow into its History list. A message can be a summary of a workflow event, or anything significant about the workflow. The workflow history list can be helpful in troubleshooting issues with the workflow.

This Visio action is the same as the Pause for Duration action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Pause for duration

Use this action to pause the workflow for a specific duration in days, hours, or minutes.

This Visio action is the same as the Pause Until Date action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Pause until date

Use this action to pause the workflow until a particular date. You can add a current date, a specific date, or a lookup.

This Visio action is the same as the Set Time Portion of Date/Time Field action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Set time portion of date/time field

Use this action to create a timestamp, and stores the output value in a variable. You can set the time in hours and minutes and add a current date, specific date or a lookup.

This Visio action is the same as the Set Workflow Status action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Set workflow status

Use this action to set the status of the workflow. The default options are Canceled, Approved, and Rejected.

You can enter a new status value in the dropdown in the action. Once you enter a status value, the entry is automatically added to the dropdown list.

If the Set Workflow Status action is the last step in your workflow where you have also used a custom value, you can see your custom value in the Status column in the list upon workflow pausing or completion.

This Visio action is the same as the Set Workflow Variable action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Set workflow variable

Use this action to set a workflow variable to a value. Use this action when you want the workflow to assign data to a variable.

This Visio action is the same as the Stop workflow action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Stop workflow

Use this action to stop the current instance of the workflow and log a message to the Workflow History list. The message that you specify in the action will appear in the Description column in the Workflow History upon workflow completion.

This Visio action is the same as the Add List Item Permissions action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Add list item permissions

This action grants specific permission levels for an item to specific users.

This Visio action is the same as the Check In Item action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Check in item

This action checks in an item that is checked out.

This Visio action is the same as the Check Out Item action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Check out item

Use this action to check out an item. The workflow verifies if the item is checked in, before it checks out a document.

This Visio action is the same as the Copy List Item action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Copy list item

Use this action to copy a list item to another list. If there is a document in the list item, the workflow also copies the document to the destination list.

This Visio action is the same as the Create List Item action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Create list item

Use this action to create a new list item in the list that you specify. You can supply the fields and values in the new item.

You can use this action whenever you want a new item to be created with specific information.

This Visio action is the same as the Delete Item action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Delete item

Use this action to delete an item.

This Visio action is the same as the Discard Check Out Item action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Discard check out item

Use this action if an item is checked out, changes have been made to it, and you want to discard the changes and check the item back in.

This Visio action is the same as the Inherit List Item Parent Permissions action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Inherit list item permissions

If your item has unique permissions, you can use this action to make the item inherit the parent permissions from the list.

This Visio action is the same as the Remove List Item Permissions action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Remove list item permissions

This action removes permissions from an item for specific users.

This Visio action is the same as the Replace List Item Permissions action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Replace list item permissions

It replaces an item's current permissions with the new permissions that you specify in the action.

This Visio action is the same as the Set Content Approval Status action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Set content approval status

If you have content approval enabled in your list, use this action to set the content approval status field to a value such as Approved, Rejected, or Pending. You can type a custom status in the action.

This Visio action is the same as the Set Field in Current Item action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Set field in current item

Use the action to set a field in the current item to a value.

This Visio action is the same as the Update List Item action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Update list item

Use this action to update a list item. You can specify the fields and the new values in those fields.

This Visio action is the same as the Wait for Field Change in Current Item action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Wait for field change in current item

This action pauses the workflow until the field in the current item has changed to a new value.

If you want the workflow to change the value of the field, rather than have the workflow wait for the field to change, use the Set Field in Current Item action instead.

This Visio action is the same as the Assign a Form to a Group action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Assign a form to a group

Use this action to enable you to create a custom task form with customized fields.

You can use this action to assign a task to one or more participants or groups prompting them to perform their tasks. Participants provide their responses it the fields of the custom task form and, when they are done with the task, click Complete Task on the form.

This Visio action is the same as the Assign a To-do Item action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Assign a to-do item

Use this action to assign a task to each of the participants, prompting them to perform their tasks and then, when they are done, to click the Complete Task button on their task form.

This Visio action is the same as the Collect Data from a User action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Collect data from a user

Use this action to assign a task to the participant, prompting them to provide the needed information in a custom task form, and then click the Complete Task button on the task form.

This action has an output clause— meaning, the workflow stores the information returned by the action in a corresponding variable. The list item ID of the completed task item from the action is stored in the collect variable.

This Visio action is the same as the Start Approval Process action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Start approval process

Use this action to route a document for approval. Approvers can approve or reject the document, reassign the approval task, or request changes.

You can assign tasks to both internal and external participants in the action. An external participant can be an employee in your organization who isn't a user in the site collection, or anyone outside your organization

This Visio action is the same as the Start Feedback Process action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Start feedback process

Use this action to assign task items for feedback to users in a specific order—serial or parallel. The default is parallel. Users or task participants can also reassign a task to other users. When the users are done, they can click the Submit Feedback button to indicate task completion.

You can assign tasks to both internal and external participants in the action. An external participant can be an employee in your organization who isn't a user in the site collection, or anyone outside your organization.

This Visio action is the same as the Start Custom Task Process action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Start custom task process

The Start Custom Task Process action is an approval process template that you can use if other approval actions do not meet your needs.

This Visio action is the same as the Lookup Manager of a User action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Lookup manager of a user

Use this action to look up a user's manager. The output value is then stored in a variable.

This Visio action is the same as the Start Document Set Approval Process action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Send approval for document set   

Use this action to begin the approval process for a document set.

This Visio action is the same as the Send Document Set to Repository action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Send document set to repository

Use this action to allow you to move or copy the document set to a document repository. A document repository can be a library in your SharePoint site, or a site on its own like the Document Center, that routes records to a specific destination based on rules that you define.

This Visio action is the same as the Send Document to Repository action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Send document to repository

Use this action to allow you to move or copy a document to a document repository. A document repository can be a library in your SharePoint site, or a site on its own like the Document Center, that routes records to a specific destination based on rules that you define.

This Visio action is the same as the Set Content Approval Status for the Document Set action in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Set content approval status for documentation set

Use this action to set content approval of a document set to Approved, Rejected, or Pending.

This Visio condition is the same as the If any value equals value condition in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Compare data source

This condition compares two values. You can specify whether the values should be equal or not equal.

This Visio condition is the same as the If current item field equals value condition in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Compare document field

This condition checks a field against a value that you specify. You can specify whether the values should be equal or not equal.

This Visio condition is the same as the Created by a specific person condition in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Created by a specified person

This condition checks if an item was created by a specific user. The user can be specified as an e-mail address, such as olivier@contoso.com, or selected from SharePoint, Exchange, or Active Directory users.

This Visio condition is the same as the Created in a specific date span condition in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Created in specific date span

This condition checks if the item was created between the specified dates. You can use the current date, a specific date, or a lookup.

This Visio condition is the same as the Modified by a specific person condition in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Modified by a specific person

Use this condition to check if an item was modified by a specified user. The user can be specified as an e-mail address, such as olivier@contoso.com, or selected from SharePoint, Exchange, or Active Directory users.

This Visio condition is the same as the Modified in a specific date span condition in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Modified in a specific date span

This condition checks if an item was modified between the specified dates. You can use the current date, a specific date, or a lookup.

This Visio condition is the same as the Title field contains keywords condition in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Title field contains keywords

This condition checks if the Title field for an item contains a specific word. You can either specify the keyword in the String Builder—which can be a static value or a dynamic string or a combination — or insert a lookup to a field or variable.

This Visio condition is the same as the The file size in a specific range kilobytes condition in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

File size is in a specific range

This condition checks if the file size of a document is between the specified sizes, in kilobytes. The condition does not include the specified sizes in the evaluation. You can enter a number or use a lookup for the first or the second size in the condition.

This Visio condition is the same as the The file type is a specific type condition in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

File is a specific type

This condition checks if the file type of the current item is of the specified type, such as docx. You can enter the file type as a string or use a lookup.

This Visio condition is the same as the Check list item permission levels condition in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Check exact user permissions

This condition checks that the specified user has the minimum necessary permission level.

This Visio condition is the same as the Check list item permissions condition in SharePoint Designer 2010 and appears as:

Check user permission

This condition checks if the specified user has the minimum necessary permissions.