I think of SharePoint designer workflow as more of a end user tool rather then a developer tool, for something a bit more helpful for developers look at K2 or Nintex. Thou if you need to update a production SharePoint designer workflow here are the steps that would recommend to making the changes off line on a development environment and deploying to production or test.
- Do a Database content migration of the site collection that contain your workflow to you dev environment. Doing this will ensure all of the GUID's in the background are the exact same a production.
- Update your workflow and associated infopath form (if any) in Dev
- Now, before moving to your test or prod environment I would highly recommend backing up you SharePoint area that we are updating as a just in case precaution.
- Publish your infopath form to production site.
- Open dev SharePoint and prod SharePoint in SharePoint designer and copy your workflows .XOML and .XOML.RULES files from dev to prod.
- Close and reopen the prod SharePoint designer. This forces the designer to pick up the new changes. I find with out this step SharePoint designer shows the old workflow.
- Open the workflow and validate that there are no missing action data.
- Publish the workflow
Hey presto,
