Modern business process is essential for transforming organizational productivity in Microsoft 365. Since the release of SharePoint workflows, Microsoft has evolved workflow orchestration to not only encompass SharePoint, but all the productivity services you use with Microsoft 365 and beyond.
Microsoft Power Automate connects to all Microsoft 365 services and over 220 services to let an enterprise build custom workflows. With the continued investment in Power Automate as the universal solution to workflow, Microsoft is retiring SharePoint 2010 workflows.
SharePoint 2010 workflows will be retired in 2020
For customers using SharePoint 2010 workflows, we recommend migrating to Power Automate during 2020 to maintain continuity in any business process.
- Starting August 1st, 2020, SharePoint 2010 workflows will be turned off for newly created tenants.
- Starting November 1st, 2020, Microsoft will begin to remove the ability to run or create SharePoint 2010 workflows from existing tenants.
SharePoint Modernization Scanner
To understand if your organization is using workflow 2010 or begin planning migration to Power Automate, we recommend that customers run the SharePoint Modernization Scanner tool to scan their tenants for legacy workflows usage. Using the Workflow Report generated by the scanner tool, customers can understand the following:
- Distribution of legacy workflows across SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013 workflows
- Distribution of out of the box and custom legacy workflow usage
- Which sites and lists use legacy workflows
- Power Automate upgradability score indicating how well the detected actions are upgradable to flows with Power Automate
Using the Workflow Report along with site information, tenant administrators can work with their users to plan the migration of legacy workflows with minimal interruption.
SharePoint 2013 workflows remain supported
SharePoint 2013 workflows will remain supported, although deprecated. However, we recommend customers move to Power Automate or other supported solutions, such as those from Preferred members of our Microsoft 365 Business Apps Partner Program.
Starting in November 2020, SharePoint 2013 workflows will be turned off by default for new tenants. Microsoft will provide a PowerShell script to let customers to activate the SharePoint 2013-based workflow engine for tenant as needed.
Use Power Automate with Microsoft 365 licenses
All Microsoft 365 licenses include usage of the Power Platform for customizing and extending Microsoft 365 applications. This includes both Power Automate and Power Apps.
Power Automate also has additional premium features that you can buy on top of your Microsoft 365 licenses. To learn more about what specific features are included with Microsoft 365 licenses go here.
SharePoint Server support for SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013 workflows
SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013-based workflows will continue to be supported for on-premises SharePoint 2016 and SharePoint 2019 Server platforms until 2026.
SharePoint Designer 2013
SharePoint 2010 workflow creation with SharePoint Online using SharePoint Designer 2013 will be turned off for any newly created tenants starting August 2020 and existing tenants starting November 2020. SharePoint Designer 2013 will work with SharePoint Server 2019 for the remainder of the client support lifecycle (2026). SharePoint Designer 2013 will not be supported beyond that timeframe.
Summary
We recognize that these changes may require additional work for some of our customers, and we’re ready to provide support during this transition. We are encouraged by our customer successes, and our ongoing investment in business process modernization in Microsoft 365 on the Power Platform. We’ll continue to share updates through our support articles at https://aka.ms/sp-workflows-support . Thank you.
