Microsoft has recently announced the retirement plans for the 2010 workflow platform for SharePoint Online. This has initiated wide discussions in SharePoint communities, since obviously no one wants to lose out of the sudden the automation mechanisms they have been using successfully for many years.
In this article, we will explain why this does not concern any of HarePoint products for Workflow Extension and why HarePoint customers stay safe in this situation.
Reason 1: This is only about the 2010 platform on SharePoint Online
Microsoft plans to retire only 2010 workflow platform and only on SharePoint Online. HarePoint does not offer any products for this platform.
Reason 2: The 2013 workflows will remain functional in SharePoint Online
Retirement does not concern the 2013 workflow platform in SharePoint Online. What is even more important, Microsoft does not announce any date when that can be stopped, so HarePoint Workflow Extensions for Office 365 will be fully functional, as well as developed and supported for a very long time in the future.
Reason 3: For SharePoint on premise, both 2010 and 2013 workflow platforms will remain functional
As was mentioned earlier, retirement plans only concern SharePoint Online, so everything is okay with on premise environments. Yes, both 2010 and 2013 workflow platforms will continue functioning without any limitations until 2026. This means that HarePoint Workflow Extensions and HarePoint Workflow Manager Extensions customers have nothing to worry about – their favorite workflow solutions are at full power and continue to be developed and supported as usual.
Reason 4: Nothing is going to happen with SharePoint Designer 2013
SharePoint Designer has always been the main tool to create workflows for SharePoint, and despite all the rumors, speculations, and deprecation announcements, you can be sure that SharePoint Designer 2013 will steadily remain at your service until 2026.
Reason 5: HarePoint’s graphical workflow designer is here and it’s free of charge
In case if you still worry about SharePoint Designer’s destiny or simply don’t like to use it, HarePoint Workflow Designer is a perfect replacement. It allows creating workflows in a convenient graphical form, it is available for both SharePoint on premise and SharePoint Online, free of charge, and what is the most remarkable – we are not going to retire it.
Reason 6: You can move your workflows to the Online with HarePoint
If you have SharePoint on premise and use workflows extensively, feel free to move to SharePoint Online, since HarePoint offers workflow products for both on premise and Online. Despite the workflows cannot be migrated in an automated way across platforms due to substantial technical differences, HarePoint provides identical list of actions (as much as possible), enabling you to recreate all the workflows from SharePoint on premise in SharePoint Online.
Reason 7: HarePoint is developing a solution for Power Automate
As per Microsoft strategy, Power Automate (also formerly known as ‘Flow’) is the modern tendency and the right way to go. HarePoint Company is also moving forward with this and currently developing a solution for Power Automate. When introduced, it will resemble all the popular automation scenarios that our customers used with classic workflows.
To recap, the announced 2010 workflow platform retirement plan for SharePoint Online does not affect any of HarePoint Workflow products. If you are an existing HarePoint user – all your automation scenarios will continue working and no actions need to be taken.
If you are not yet with HarePoint – then find out more about HarePoint Workflow products:
- For SharePoint Online
- For SharePoint on premise (2013 platform)
- For SharePoint on premise (2010 platform)
- HarePoint Workflow Designer
- HarePoint Content And Workflow Migrator