endpoint.tv: Using the WF Replicator Activity

Welcome to the latest video in the weekly WF/WCF Screencast series.

In this short video, CSD MVP Matt Milner from PluralSight guides the viewer through how to using the WF replicator activity to add more advanced flow control capabilities to your WF workflows.

In this screencast, Matt introduces the replicator activity, which allows you to implement ForEach-like semantics on workflow data. He adds the replicator to an existing workflow, binds the activity to the incoming data, and demonstrates how the replicator activity runs child activities. For this screencast, Matt uses an example sending e-mail notifications to persons in a data list.

While explaining how the replicator works, Matt explains a few aspects of the replicator activity: (a) how to interact with child activities within the replicators events, (b) how to set the activity execution type to have control over how the iterations are executed (i.e., sequence or parallel), and (c) how to use conditions to set a replicator stopping point.

For additional information on WF, please check out the WF Dev Center on MSDN and the .NET Endpoint team blog. For more information on classes offered by Aaron and the PluralSight folks, check out their catalog of instructor led courses and new online courses that cover a variety of Microsoft technologies, ranging from .NET v3.5 to WSS to BizTalk server.