How to maintain workflow associations when deploying a SharePoint Designer wsp file on my customer's machine?

Question

I know this might be a silly question but here goes... I created an event calendar site and it has some customized webparts (done using visual studio), custom views (XLV webpart views) and workflows (custom workflows using sharepoint designer 2010) associated with it. I saved the site as .wsp file. Now the solution works perfectly fine on my standalone machine. But when I deploy it on the client machine workflows assigned to the site are not attached and any customization done using sharepoint designer are not reflected onto the deployment environment.

Well as far as I think the customizations are not attached to the .wsp file and so the deployment done is not working. So is there any way to deploy the solution without loosing the customizations?

Note: The deployment environment is using same AD and same sharepoint 2010 setup. And when I backup the site and restore it on the client machine all the customizations work.

Answer 1

Workflows generated in SharePoint designer hardcode the ListIds - you will need to modify the .xoml definitions to use the list names instead. for example:

<ns1:FindValueActivity x:Name="ID55" __Context="{ActivityBind ROOT,Path=__context}"
 ExternalFieldName="User_x0020_Account"
 ReturnValue="{x:Null}"
 ExternalListId="<strong>My List Name</strong>"
 ValueType="System.String">

You can find more information around Sharepoint designer workflow packaging/deployment here.