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There this application called UiPath and it's been said that UiPath is built on top of Workflow Foundation. I was wondering if it is possible to use Workflow Foundation as a Framework and create custom EXE file with a custom UI. This will allow us to run Workflow Foundation tools within a custom application rather than Visual Studio. It this possible?

Thanks in advance,

E-A
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  • WF itself doesn't have a UI. What you see in VS *is* a custom UI that represents the underlying elements in one way or another, so Yes. On the other hand, MS all but abandoned WF. Developers certainly did, years ago. It can't run well on web environments, it can't run on .NET Core. There are far, far more popular open source workflow engines in Java – Panagiotis Kanavos Apr 18 '19 at 08:21
  • You can have a look at WF integration with WPF, [here](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5008533/real-world-examples-of-wf-and-wpf-interaction) and [here](https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsapps/Windows-Workflow-eaa24bdb) – Pavel Anikhouski Apr 18 '19 at 08:23
  • The WF tutorials show how to create a workflow programmatically and save it as XML, or load one back and retrieve the elements. "All" a UI does is create the flow structure in memory, or display one loaded from XML. – Panagiotis Kanavos Apr 18 '19 at 08:24
  • @PavelAnikhouski this isn't a question about integration. It's a question about creating a designer for WF. Besides, did you check the dates on those links? Some of those answers point to dead links, some to projects created by small companies 8 years ago – Panagiotis Kanavos Apr 18 '19 at 08:26
  • Building a UI for WF is no different than building a UI for **any** workflow engine. You need to decide whether it will be a desktop or web application, you need a diagramming component for that environment, you need to code that diagramming component to create flow graphs the way you want it to, and *finally* you can create the WF elements from the designer's model, and save them to XML – Panagiotis Kanavos Apr 18 '19 at 08:28
  • The tough part is creating the custom components that actually do something like call web/REST services or perform some kind of action on your own executable. Sure, you can create an activity that calls a hard-coded class/method in your system, maybe with some parameters. That ties your UI to a specific application though. Maybe that's good, maybe not. What about calling web services or REST services? That requires a UI that would allow specifying endpoints, requests, parsing of responses etc. – Panagiotis Kanavos Apr 18 '19 at 08:34
  • I also found an open source application called TASKT. Although it is a very good project, it is NOT an application on top of WF. It is only another solution that WF presents. What I'm hoping to create a separate UI on top of WF. Because when I present a UI to my customer, I do not want him to install Visual Studio but my own UI for him. – E-A Apr 18 '19 at 08:46

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The answer was just a click away of searching "windows workflow foundation designer rehosting"

For a more straight forward answer click here

E-A
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