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The Retirement of SharePoint 2010 Workflows

The Retirement of SharePoint 2010 Workflows

SharePoint 2010 Workflows are Going Away, and You Have Questions.

You may have heard the news on July 6, 2020 that SharePoint 2010 workflows are being retired this year, and likely have a lot of questions. If you are hearing this news for the first time, below is an excerpt from Microsoft’s official announcement.

  • Starting August 1st, 2020, SharePoint 2010 workflows will be turned off for newly created tenants.
  • Starting November 1st, 2020, Microsoft will begin to remove the ability to run or create SharePoint 2010 workflows from existing tenants.
  • Starting November 1st, 2020, SharePoint 2013 workflows will be turned off for newly created tenants.

If you are not familiar with SharePoint Online tenants and how they work, you may have some questions.

What do these dates mean?

If you are currently using SharePoint Online (Office 365), starting on November 1st, 2020, SharePoint 2010 workflows will stop working. While It may not happen on the first of the month, all tenants will be affected eventually. Microsoft rolls these changes out gradually rather than all at once, and eventually, all tenants are affected, regardless of size.

If you are using SharePoint on-premises, you will not be affected. However, if you are considering migrating your on-premises SharePoint implementation to Office 365, or implementing SharePoint Online for the first time, any tenants created on or after August 1st, 2020 will not have the ability to create or run 2010 workflows. If you are migrating to SharePoint Online and have SharePoint 2010 workflows, you will need to replace them.

Will this affect my SharePoint Sites?

To answer this you must answer two questions.

  1. Are you using SharePoint Online or SharePoint on-premises?
    If you are using SharePoint on-premises then you will not be affected by this change, although you should still consider a migration plan, as what is implemented in SharePoint Online will inevitably follow to the on-premises versions of SharePoint. If you are using SharePoint Online, you may be affected by future changes.
  2. Do you have any SharePoint 2010 workflows?
    If you aren’t familiar with what type of workflows you use, you can check using Microsoft’s SharePoint Modernization Scanner. It will scan your SharePoint sites and detect the usage of any legacy workflows, including both SharePoint 2010 and 2013 workflows.

If you are using SharePoint Online and are running any SharePoint 2010 Workflows, you will be affected by this change.

I have 2010 workflows on SharePoint Online what should I do?

The short answer is that you will have to replace them.

The preferred platform to replace SharePoint workflows is Microsoft’s Power Automate. This offers a variety of benefits over using SharePoint workflows and can replace all the default functionality of SharePoint workflows. If you have extended SharePoint’s functionality with custom actions, you should review the available actions in Power Automate to duplicate these actions.

What about my SharePoint 2013 workflows?

As of right now, these workflows will continue to work as intended. They are considered “supported” but are also considered “deprecated”, which means no new features are going to be added to this service. In addition, any tenants created on or after November 1st, will not have 2013 workflows as an option. This can be turned on using PowerShell if required.

How can DMC help?

This process can be daunting. Developing a plan of action and relying on experts with Power Automate experience will be invaluable in this time of transition. Our team will:

  • Analyze your SharePoint site and prioritize workflows that must be rebuilt
  • Determine if the processes that your 2010 workflows support should be rethought or redesigned
  • Architect and design your workflows 
  • (Re)Build workflows using Power Automate (a.k.a. Flow) 

DMC has a weatlth of experience with migrating and building new Flows in Power Automate to manage, automate and streamline business processes. Please contact us if you need assistance migrating your existing workflows or building new workflows to improve your business processes.

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