Dynamic States in State Machine Workflow

Question

What I have?

I have a state machine list workflow created for an event management system. It has got 5 states defined and it is working fine. The workflow will start on creation of an item in the list.

What I want?

Now, the customer wants some changes to that. He want the user who is starting the workflow to choose a template which defines the states and state transitions in the workflow.

What problem am I facing?

There can be many such templates and it really hard to create different workflows for each of them. So, what I want is to create states dynamically by referring to the template selected.

Can somebody please tell me if it is possible? If yes, how? Or, is there any alternative way to achieve this?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

This is an interesting question! I will say that to tackle this, it may be possible to either add some columns to the list the workflow is for, or create a separate list maybe. This list could hold the desired state and transition. It seems feasible, but complex. I don't know how far you could take it, but it might do what you need.

Answer 2

I would create a different list for each template/workflow and provide a menu that allows to create a new item for each list. If later you want to see the status of all the templates, you will have to write query that joins all the lists, or display one after the other with webparts.