Workflow: How to copy current item to a dynamically determined location

Question

Scenario: I have a group of users; each has a private document library (named with their userid). When a person updates a list item I need to put copy of the item into their library (using a codeless solution).

Is there anyway to 'trick' the workflow designer into letting me do something like the following:

• var destinationURL = "http://blah/site/" + CurrentItem["UserID"]
• ACTION: Copy item in Current Item to destinationURL

The only apparent way to do this is to make an if statement for each person and manually select their library. I really want to avoid that for 60 people. Any suggestions?

I looked into using a drop off library w/ content organizer rules but it looks like I'd still have to have 1 rule per person.

Answer 1

in your work flow you'll want to do something like if (modified by or created by == UserID) then (copy this item to destination)

Answer 2

You can use a workflow lookup to get properties of the item that triggered the workflow. Can you get the "Modified By" property of the Current Item with the lookup and use that to build the URL?

Answer 3

If you allow me, this is an unusual request. The benefit of a tool like SharePoint is to share and avoid duplicates, and you are going in the exact opposite direction.

With a SharePoint Designer workflow, you can't set the target list dynamically.

The closest I can think of is e-mail enabled lists. Maybe you could enable incoming e-mail on each target list, then use the workflow to build the list e-mail address dynamically and send the e-mail. [disclaimer: not tested, I am not sure if workflows accept a dynamic string in the e-mail "to" field]