There is no easy way to deploy a SharePoint Designer workflow and manually creating a workflow from scratch when wanting to move it from one environement to the other is definitly not a solution either. Though web packages are part of the solution, I will show you additional tricks you will need to know in order to make sure you can ‘deploy’ sucessfully your workflows.
Export the workflow
Go to SharePoint Designer, click on ‘File’ -> ‘Export’ -> ‘Personal Web Package…’
Add the workflow to you web package and click on ‘OK’
You should now have a web package file with the workflow you want to export.
Import the workflow
From your new environment you want to import the workflow to, go to SharePoint Designer, click on ‘File’ -> ‘Import’ -> ‘Personal Web Package…’
Select the Workflow you wish to import and click ‘Import’
Additional work required
Now that you have imported your workflow, you have to update GUIDs and Tasks.
Open your workflow and reassign the SharePoint list it should be attached to:
Notice that all that all the lookup fields are now replaced by the old GUIDs. Select individual lookup and an reassign the correct lookup field.
Now, if your workflow contains any assign or collect actions, delete them all.
Though your workflow is NOT complete, click on ‘Finish’. The XOML is going to be updated and all references of assign or collect actions are going to get cleaned up. If you skipped that step your workflow will not work.
Go to your workflow folder in SharePoint Designer and make sure you get rid of all the aspx pages (task templates and the workflow’s start page).
Open your workflow again, and add all missing assign or collect actions previously deleted
Click on ‘Finish’ when you are done.
The workflow has now been ‘deployed’ to your new environment with a minimal amount of work (considering the alternative of doing it all manually).
