While loops in SharePoint Designer 2013 Workflows

Two types of workflows are available in SharePoint 2013:

• SharePoint 2010 Workflows: Traditional SharePoint workflows using Workflow Foundation classes with .NET 3.5
• SharePoint 2013 Workflows: Windows Azure Workflow server with .NET 4.0 (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj163181(v=office.15).aspx for an overview and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj163276(v=office.15).aspx for installation instruction).

The good news is when running SharePoint 2013 Workflows you can create while loops in SharePoint Designer 2013 workflows. Here’s how they look.

Once you’ve opened a site and a list in SharePoint Designer 2013 you can create a new List Workflow:

 

The “Create List Workflow” dialog allows you to select the platform for the workflow – you must select SharePoint 2013 Workflow to enable the loop option:

Now the ribbon will display a new button “Loop” with two available loop:

And so loops can now be added to the workflow:

Joy of joys!  Of course, enabling while loops in SharePoint Designer 2010 is much more difficult – you can find one solution here:  https://nickgrattan.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/while-loops-in-sharepoint-designer-workflows/