Advice on SharePoint and BizTalk solutions

Hi all,

For the first time, we are looking at SharePoint and BizTalk integration. We have an existing manual process which we would like to automate. Essentially:

We have a new customer.

Their details are keyed into a spreadsheet by the sales person.

The spreadsheet is passed around various people by email for manual approval and credit checks.

Another team then re-key the information into the CRM system.

We figured we could do this using InfoPath as the spreadsheet replacement, running a workflow in SharePoint and then having BizTalk pick the xml form up, update the CRM system, and then update the form in SharePoint with a “completed” status.

Now the approval piece is probably one or more hops and contains some conditional logic. What I don’t know as I’ve not looked at this before is whether the approval piece is going to require a lot of development work (I think it’s beyond the scope of the out-the-box approval workflow but I don’t know if it’s out the scope of what SharePoint designer can offer). We are probably looking at logic like “if value x is 1 then route approval to this person, if it’s 2 then go to this person). Are we into custom development territory there (windows workflow for example)?

I also have a question around BAS and HWS in BizTalk. They seem to be part of the SharePoint story but I’ve not looked at them before. I’ll do some reading but I’d really like to know if anyone has done similar projects or had experience of when to use BAS/HWS and when not to – what scenarios do they fit?

Any sage advice is appreciated.

Thanks,

Matt

OK, I thought HWS was going to be removed and it has been in 2009 along with BAS (we are still using 2006 R2). So I can discount those as options. I'd still like to hear from folks who have done similar projects though :)

Hi Matt,

I think some of the BAS features are now used via the EDI/AS2 area particularly partner management.

I havent used HWS before except on a training course years ago and am not really with anyone ever really using it, i think it was well known post BTS 2004 that it would have a limited lifespan as its feature set was not that great and other products would offer more by integrating with them.

For your sharepoint stuff i think you can do stuff like you want to do, ive seen examples where they implemented authorisation processes with sharepoint (not sure how complex thou).  Do you know about the light and easy videos, theres a sharepoint integration one in there which might be useful if you head down this route.

http://blogs.breezetraining.com.au/mickb/2009/07/08/UnofficalLaunchOfTheBizTalk2009LightAndEasyWebCastSeries.aspx

HTH

Mike