Postope Designer 2010 Workflow Engine Retirement
On 6th July 2020, it was suddenly announced that SharePoint 2010 workflow engine is going to stop working by November 2020.
For at least a few of my clients it will represent a catastrophe.
Our suggestion is to push back the retirement date to a more reasonable date. For example, match if with SharePoint Designer 2013 support lifecycle or with InfoPath support lifecycle.
Large organizations depend on clear sunsetting timelines. Announcement that leaves them only four months to react is completely unrealistic. Organizations need to plan resources, budget, hire SharePoint SME’s and involve business owners that rely on these workflows and much more.
Reasons for postponement:
- The clients were not properly warned about the Workflows retirement.
- There are SPO tenants with thousands SharePoint 2010 Workflows running with no direct path of quick replacement.
- Not all Workflow 2010 can be replaced with Workflow 2013 engine or Power Automate because of features differences.
- Many Clients do not have enough time and resources to replace the existing workflows.
- Pandemic is still not over and this announcement feels very out of place.
Denis Molodtsov
shared this idea
AdminSharePoint UserVoice Admin
(SharePoint UserVoice Admin, Microsoft SharePoint)
responded
We’ve been working one on one with customers deeply impacted by this change and encourage people to reach out to support if they have special circumstances. However, we wanted to provide clarity that our policy will not be changing and our previously communicated timelines will continue. In that regard, we will be retiring 2010 Workflows on November 1st, 2020 in SharePoint Online. After November 1st, 2020, while existing 2010 workflows will stop to run, users can still open and view their workflows in SharePoint Designer. Please visit the following link to get the latest updates about the 2010 Workflows retirement: https://aka.ms/sp-workflows-support.
181 comments
Comments are closed-
Anonymous
commented
David is spot on with that comment. Thank you for the Nintex advice and we agree that powerapps and automate are no solution
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David
commented
I agree the short notice is crazy. I am upgrading one of my SharePoint sites, which has about a dozen forms with workflows. Fortunately none have SharePoint 2010 workflows. They all use SharePoint 2013 workflows and InfoPath forms. To prepare for the deprecation of those features, we are migrating everything to Nintex forms and Workflows and not even bothering with PowerApps or PowerAutomate (main reason because of cost and the difficulty to use). The new Nintex responsive forms automatically render beautifully for any size device, and they have a dedicated mobile app for phones.
I've currently put in about 200 hours migrating everything so far, but it is going faster now that I have the hang of Nintex forms and Workflows, which really didn't take too long to grasp. I attended training for PowerApps, and even with training I could never get a grasp on it to be efficient in creating usable forms. However, PowerAutomate was easy enough to figure out, but there were always problems with PowerAutomate for a number of reasons.
Microsoft, you need to wake up to the fact that while SharePoint 2010 and 2013 workflows had their problems, along with InfoPath, they provided tools that were not too difficult to learn and that you could develop powerful solutions with. I know there are fans of PowerApps and PowerAutomate, but the folks who work on SharePoint at my company feel they are way too difficult to use and maintain.
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Anonymous
commented
postpone please!
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Phil Stolle
commented
I beg of you please postpone the retirement. The timeline for retirement is too short and puts us in a real bind.
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Sam
commented
SP product group should get a serious telling off for this. This announcement has come out of nowhere and providing 4 months notice is insufficient. Power Automate is not a straightforward migration option, instead flows need to be developed from scratch + by taking into account the shortcomings/limitations of Power Automate at this stage. Businesses are already dealing with the 2020's curve balls thrown at them, and then Microsoft comes out of nowhere with this not at all popular announcement.
The approach to this retirement/deprecation has been badly managed. At least a 12 month period or more should be a notice for a change of this weight and impact.
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Chris
commented
A postponement would be extremely helpful. We have business partners that rely on the 2010 workflows for continuity of operations. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
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Charles Gil
commented
please postpone this. Power Automate always breaks or runs into some kind of error. SP designer workflows are pretty solid.
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Anonymous
commented
We have gone into denial mode and waiting for MS to announce the inevitable extension. Worse than a bojo cabinet these guys. Treat your customers with some respect.
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Anonymous
commented
Please postpone this. This hardly provides enough time and there is no automated upgrade option. Flow is not geo compatible either. Please allow customers to consider all aspects of compliance before hurrying to sunset this.
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Adam
commented
Who wants to hear a good joke?
"As part of the evolution of the Microsoft 365 service, we periodically evaluate the capabilities of the service to make sure that we're delivering the utmost value to customers. After careful consideration, we concluded that for SharePoint 2010 workflows, Microsoft 365 customers would be better served by modern workflow solutions."
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/sharepoint-2010-workflow-retirement-1ca3fff8-9985-410a-85aa-8120f626965fROTFL, I would pay to stay with good, old Sharepoint workflows...
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Anonymous
commented
@Ian We submitted a service request via the 365 admin center. The premiere support agent asked us to scan our environment with the SharePoint modernization scanner and provide the report. They granted an extension to Mar 1, 2021 after reviewing.
There is a column in the modernization report called "Flow upgradability". It provides a score for how upgradable a certain workflow is. Sadly, we had many low scores. It doesn't look like Power Automate will be the right solution. We may have to develop and schedule PowerShell scripts to handle what Microsoft is taking away. Especially where unique permissions are concerned.
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Ian Crosby
commented
Is there a way to obtain an extension to the deadline? How does one go about it?
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Anonymous
commented
How to check extension on the tenant till March 1, 2021.
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Denis
commented
Another reminder that Microsoft provides "guidance" on migrating from SP2010 workflows to Power Automate, which continues to remain silent on all of the functionality gaps between the products.
I encourage you to formalise your feedback to Microsoft on the features in the official feedback for this page here:
https://github.com/SharePoint/sp-dev-docs/issues?q=%2250df0c72-d567-a572-a4db-80730c5881f7%22+
The authors of the original document are monitoring this feedback, even though they are not yet addressing the issues.
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Srinivas
commented
Most of our workflows heavily depending on SharePoint 2010 workflow feature. In this short notice it is difficult for us to migrate all the 2010 related workflows and move to other supported solutions.
We would like to know how Microsoft will support us during this transition, if so, how would we approach and what steps should be taken from end.
Also, is there any possibility of extension for this product.
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[Deleted User]
commented
Just moving from a SP2010 workflow to a power automate flow. Nightmare:
- copy item -> ok but I have to work field by fied, and I lose attachments! I have to get them, re attach them, not a 2020 way of doing
- change access rights: arg sorry, not available! :-)
- 3000 executions a month: I had to check licences (may be some day we will pay for each 'a' letter used in a mail)
- sender user : I have to think about it, before the sender was the name of the SharePoint site...So : I have to feel lucky as I do not have a lot of workflows to recreate. But I should ask Microsoft to pay for that, and not my customers...
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Marcus Khoo
commented
1619 votes and not even an acknowledgement from Microsoft. This does not bode well :(
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Rob reno
commented
Shameful behavior by Microsoft
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James Stuart
commented
SP product group should get a serious telling off for this. The 4 months notice is insufficient, especially considering that the 'next step' is to move to SP2013 workflows which are themselves on borrowed time. If Microsoft had published a tool to convert SP2010 workflows to Power Automate then the schedule is almost excusable . . . but without this it is not. We have applied for the 3 month extension. The approach to this deprecation has been badly managed - What is the rush here? Usually a change with this level of customer impact would have at least 12 months notice.
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MarkOpti
commented
MS need to realize that sudden deprecation of long time platforms ( SP Workflows, InfoPath, etc.) not only create a huge workload for customers, but it makes us think really hard on using MS solutions. We already heard "the latest and greatest" songs that currently playing for FLow in the past , only to be discontinued and caused us to spend lot of efforts ( i.e. $$$) to migrate. MS is not a reliable platform anymore as it changes directions on a dime.
