Many have asked. Many have said it is not possible. At the SharePoint Conference in Seattle today (March 4^th, 2008), Todd Bleeker is presenting the steps necessary to take a workflow created in SharePoint Designer and port/convert it to a workflow template in Visual Studio!

The process started with an innocent question back in the fall of 2007 at Mindsharp's TechWeek. All of the Mindsharp Authorized Trainers, and one lucky developer (me) we assembled to share what we know and learn from others. One session address this workflow topic. The session ended when the steps we attempted crashed the site collection. (Thank goodness for virtual machines!) The topic list of that week was submitted to Microsoft as potential sessions at the SharePoint Conference. They selected the workflow porting session to be presented.

The task fell to SharePoint MVP and superstar presenter Todd Bleeker. As usual, Todd threw his considerable enthusiasm at the topic. I had the privilege of being a second set of eyes and a sounding board to Todd during the days leading up the presentation. Not only did I learn a ton about workflows, but I also interacted with many smart people who contributed ideas, encouragement and humor to us in the last 48 hours. I am honored to be the one to make this post, but I am not solely responsible for its content. I want to specifically mention Todd Bleeker (of course), Kimmo Forss of Microsoft, Marilyn White of White Consulting, Rob Bogue of Thor Projects, David Mann of Mann Software and Woody Windischman.

[Details to follow]