Organizing WF4 workflow xaml

Question

I have a rather large workflow defined in xaml, consisting of nested flow-charts and sequences. It's a pain to click through the entire hierarchy to modify an activity which is deeply embedded in the workflow. After a project rebuild, the workflow designer resets to the top view, so I have to do this alot.

Is there a way to create separate xaml files containing parts of the main workflow and including them in the main file ? This way, I would be able to edit by simply opening the sub-flows from the solution explorer.

Would invoking a subflow xaml from a CodeActivity seem like a good idea ?

Any other hints to speed up workflow editing ?

Thanks in advance.

Janiek

Answer 1

Assuming you are talking about Visual Studio, Custom XAML Activities are a possible solution.

How to - you can create a separate file wrapping one of the flowcharts called e.g. FlowActivity1. When you build the project, you should see FlowActivity1 appears in the Visual Studio toolbox. You can then go to your main workflow, and replace the flowchart with FlowActivity1. You will also need to create Arguments on the FlowActivity1 activity in order to pass in variable values from the main workflow.