How to register a workflow in FIM 2010

Sometimes it really kills you to setup a (technical) 3.5 workflow in FIM 2010. You get an error like: “FIM was unable to deserialize the xoml…”

Okay – what can I use that for?
So to generate (not write!) the xoml that actually will work; a simple trick can be used as seen below.

Create a console application with these simple lines of code, and you are having the needed xoml presented to you directly into a text-file. This code will generate a file (customWF.xoml) containing the working xoml that you can next paste into FIM 2010 to register the workflow.

static void Main(string[] args)
{
  //instance of my workflow to go into FIM
  var owb = new KMD.FimNativeWF.Contractor.StartContractorOWB();
  
  //parent = special FIM SeqWF!    
  var seqWorkflow = new SequentialWorkflow();      
  seqWorkflow.Activities.Add(owb); //add owb as childworkflow

  //generate xoml using the WorkflowMarkupSerializer
  var settings = new XmlWriterSettings();    
  settings.OmitXmlDeclaration = true;
  using (var xmlWriter = XmlWriter.Create("CustomWF.xoml", settings))
  {
    var ser = new WorkflowMarkupSerializer();
    ser.Serialize(xmlWriter, seqWorkflow);
    xmlWriter.Flush();
  }
}

That’s what it takes ;-)

StackOverflow Tags: FIM 2010, Workflow Foundation