Creating Status Reports with Project Online and SharePoint Designer (Part 3)

In the last post, we created a workflow to trigger a status reporting process.  In this post, we’ll look at how to create a trigger for the workflow and embed it on a PDP for easy access and intuitive use.  To create this trigger, we’ll need to go to the Project Action list and start our new workflow.

Find the Initiation Form URL

To enable the testing of the workflow, I’ve manually create an item in our list with a functioning Project UID.

I fire off the workflow on the second item in the list.  This displays the Initiation Form we configured in the second post.

Note the URL for the form:

https://projectna.sharepoint.com/sites/pwa/wfsvc/7a64fbcaf3324d039910fa496f359b17/WFInitForm.aspx?List={1c1a0038-b729-4b26-99d8-193d46c13ecd}&ID=2&ItemGuid={B4276416-A12E-4721-B2FC-40CE66666BAE}&TemplateID={1F39EC48-B553-45F6-911D-64DE745056A0}&WF4=1&Source=https%3A%2F%2Fprojectna%2Esharepoint%2Ecom%2Fsites%2Fpwa%2FLists%2FProject%2520Actions%2FAllItems%2Easpx

It looks like a long string of variables – which it is.  We are going to parse this and add it to the Project Server workflow so a new unique URL will be generated in the Project Action list each time a new project is created.

Parsing the URL

The first issue is that the URL is too long to store in a standard link list column.  If we try to use this URL, the workflow will fail.  Hence, we need to strip all of the nonessential components from the URL.

That yields a much shorter URL:

https://projectna.sharepoint.com/sites/pwa/wfsvc/7a64fbcaf3324d039910fa496f359b17/WFInitForm.aspx?List={1c1a0038-b729-4b26-99d8-193d46c13ecd}&ID=1&TemplateID={1F39EC48-B553-45F6-911D-64DE745056A0}

Test this URL by dropping it into the browser to see if it activates our status update workflow.

Creating the Project Workflow

We’re now going to add a step to our project workflow to create the URL to trigger the form.  In this case, I have a simple workflow with a single stage.  In this stage, I’ve added three steps:

The first thing we’re going to do is create the initial item in the Project Action list.  We do this so that we can get the item ID, which is then added to the URL, and then updated back into our item.  Feel free to add any URL to the URL field – and populate the Project UID field with the correct lookup.

Note that this creates a workflow variable for the UID of the item in the Project Action list.  We’ll use this UID to come back and modify the item in step #3.

Here, we run into a limitation of SharePoint Designer.  If we try to create a URL that uses lookups as well as characters such as {,} & %, we will get an error.

For the search engines: Using the special characters ‘[%%]’ or ‘[%xxx%]’ in any string, or using the special character ‘{‘ in a string that also contains a workflow lookup, may corrupt the string and cause an unexpected result when the workflow runs.

Luckily, there’s a simple hack to get around this.  We need to capture the various elements with special characters as their own workflow variable – then compile that back into the URL.

Now we reassemble the URL, using the variables instead of special characters.

Note the addition of the user friendly label at the end of the URL.  Also note that we are looking up the ID for the item in the Project Actions list using the key of item GUID = workflow variable ActionUID.

From there, we go back and update the Project Action item with the correct URL.  The workflow should now look like this:

Add this to an EPT in Project Server…and we’re ready to move to the next step – creating the PDPs….