Start Workflow programmatically

Question

We work with an Doc Library which receives the files via E-Mail. This works great, but now we want to change the filename via workflow. The problem in this situation is that the workflow doesn't start automatically when you are sending the files via Email. So we have to start the workflow manually. Is there a way to add a javascript which updates the files, so that the workflow starts automatically?

Answer 1

Why exactly javascript? It doesn't fire automatically too, when a new e-mail will receive. To answer on your question, you can try update files by the code from How to: Create, Update, and Delete List Items Using JavaScript. To retrieve items by query try How to: Retrieve List Items Using JavaScript.

First of all and most properly, you can create List Event receiver and realise you own rename logic in ItemAdding method.

SharePoint jobs can help with running workflows programmatically but as was mentioned before to prevent running code on processed files you should add to the library some hidden column and fill it.

The last one, PowerShell could help to run workflows automatically, but it shoul be run from the server side, for example Task Scheduler, and still you have to exclude processed files from query.

Answer 2

How about creating a site workflow which loops through each file in your library? If you add a hidden column you can set a flag when the workflow has actioned a file so it is ignored the next time.