Hi all

I'm not a workflow newbie, far from it. But I am new to blackpoint/blackpearl. I apologise for the length of the question.

We've used Livelink for years to do some intensive enterprise workflow. But decided we could run it down and do without workflow. So our version of LL is now 4+ versions out of date. Suffice it to say workflow has returned to the corporate agenda. We have both SharePoint WSS and also SharePoint MOSS within the business. We have some very simple workflow implemented in WSS for basic requests like new Stock Item Code, new vendor or change of a vendors details. And these are pretty simple to do in WSS through task lists. We use MOSS for our own document repository but its restricted to the IT department really and mostly the DEV/Project Team within IT. I'm a developer by the way who actually writes code.

We now want to reproduce some of the workflow we long since retired. We don't want to go back to LL as its Oracle based and really doesn't fit our MS platform. We need something that satisfies a number of key requirements.

So my question is simple, what combination of things do i need?

We'd like a more visual tool than SharePoint Designer. We need to be able to trigger workflows from Web based forms. We need to be able to customise the web based form at different steps so different people see different things. We need it to audit without us writing tons of code as we have to in WSS. Automated escalation after something has been sat at a certain step for a defined length of time is required as is the concept of things being due or overdue. We also need to allocate permissions very flexibly. We're a hospitals group with 36 hospitals and when we raise a workflow we want it to route to the relevant group at the relevant hospital. Doing this with 36 separate branches is impractical. We need them all to be at the same STEP but assigned to different groups so users see their workflows not all 36 hospitals workflows. User and group management is also obviously a big issue so good tools here would be essential.

We would prefer to use reporting services to report on where things are up to and how long they've taken etc... Integration into Outlook would be nice but we could live without it.

Now I've read the various bits about blackpoint and blackpearl but am still unsure what combination of SharePoint WSS ,SharePoint MOSS and blackpoint or blackpearl we need to get this level of functionality. I am of course expected to have selected, bought, paid for and installed an entire platform before Christmas, so I don't really have the luxury of time to load it up and try it.

We've have implemented workflow with another product and it was a disaster, the tool had been grossly oversold and its murdering a couple of fairly well specified servers with what can best described as a pitiful workload so it just isn't scaleable. For the work we have planned we are looking at something like 10,000 workflows a week and 800 users, with maybe 20 to 30 concurrent.

Does anyone have any advice or can anyone point me in the direction of someone who can answer these kinds of questions? I'm obviously missing something if its the docs I've downloaded.

many thanks.