At the moment we have official documentation available on how to upgrade an existing Microsoft Workflow Manager installation to SharePoint Workflow Manager and how perform a fresh installation of SharePoint Workflow Manager.
What is missing are the required steps if an existing Microsoft Workflow Manager should be replaced with a new SharePoint Workflow Manager on new hardware.
Josh Roark and Niru Meesala, two of my colleagues from the US, have published a blog post which includes the necessary steps to achieve this:
This article is intended to fill the gap till official documentation on this topic is available.
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Thank you for sharing. It’s great to have the documentation to move to new hardware with SP WFM.
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Thanks Stefan,
Currently I have a case open for an inplace upgrade problem (Case ID#2303130050000796), but this could be an alternative for my problem.
I suppose if I only want to add new SPWFM servers, I follow the manual from “Install SPWFM and the SPWFM client on the SPWFM server”?
Kind regards,
Johan
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Hi Johan,
yes – these are the right steps. But you cannot join SPWFM servers to the Microsoft WFM farm.
You need to create a new separate farm.
Cheers,
Stefan
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We’re using Nintex Workflow and Forms for SP 2019 which runs ontop of the 2010 Workflow Engine. It doesn’t look like there is an upgrade path from WF 2010 to MS WF Manager, and Nintex will be moving to 0365 only in 2025. Nintex allowed for more functionality than SP Designer, does anyone know if we go to MS WF Manager will we able to build everything that Nintex could or will we lose functionality? Our other option is moving to K2 Workflow for on-premise, which seems more powerful than MS WF, but if someone has used MS WF Manager and can say that it’s now much more powerful than before please let us know. We have 2700 Workflows and 2300 Forms so we can’t step backwards in functionality when 2010 goes away. Thank you.
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Hi Victor,
not sure if you are aware but SP2010 Workflows in OnPrem will be supported till July 14th, 2026.
More than 3 years from now.
Cheers,
Stefan
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Yes, I wrote 2025 above, I meant 2026. It will take us 3 years to rewrite our 2700 workflows, many of them are large to the point that we hit the 5 MB cap for WF definition files in SharePoint and we had to scale them down. For example, approval tasks for 30 people let you say to go with first response, majority wins, or all must approve to move on. We have a scenario where they want all approvers to respond before moving on regardless of who does not approve so they can get all reasons for disapproval up front and correct them. The only way to do that was adding 30 different parallel approval tasks, which pushed the size of the WF over the 5 mb SP WF definition file limit. That’s why I wonder if we go with MS WF Manager how much more powerful it is now, or if it’s just a new engine for running the same functionality? Thank you.
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Aloha Stefan,
We are in the process of upgrading our SharePoint solution. We have two WFE and two APP servers for SharePoint 2019. We are looking to upgrade to SharePoint SE. I had a question about the workflow solution. I saw this on the installtion page:
SharePoint Workflow Manager is supported in farms having an odd number of hosts, for example, 1, 3, or 5. A farm with 2 or 4 SharePoint Workflow Manager hosts is not supported.
Does this mean that we cannot install workflow manger because we have an even number of WFE??
Mahalo for your assistance.
Kevin
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Hi Kevin,
this number represents the supported number of SPWFM servers in the SPWFM farm. It is not about the number of SharePoint servers in the SharePoint farm.
Cheers,
Stefan
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Danke Stefan!
Aloha,
Kevin