We are happy to announce the release of Adobe’s newest application: WorkflowLab (public Alpha release). WorkflowLab was built by DevelopmentArc for Adobe and was designed, developed and deployed in under 6 weeks.  This new AIR application allows users to view and construct project workflows to demonstrate how their products, applications, and/or technologies are built using Adobe Technologies. The tool allows user to define project tasks and assign Adobe tools and technologies to those tasks to help illustrate how Adobe’s products and services assisted in completing the project. Inside of the tool Adobe has provided a core set of workflow starting points that can be used to help guide the workflow of new project or as a starting point for your own workflow. Download it here.

Development Process and Technologies

WorkflowLab was built using Adobe’s soon to be released Flex 4 SDK, Flash Builder, and Flash Catalyst technologies.  Taking advantage of the new Flex 4 skinning Component Architecture, DevelopmentArc was able to skin almost all of the application’s components using FXG (MXMLG).  In an upcoming Adobe Developer Center article we will walk you through the entire process from start to finish on how we planned, designed and developed WorkflowLab using these new technologies.

We were lucky to be joined on this project with Chris Stone (http://twitter.com/stony) out of Vancouver BC. Chris is one of the most talented UX designs we have had the privilege to work with. For the project Chris leveraged Adobe InDesign for user workflows and wireframes and Adobe Illustrator for all design comps. I can proudly state that Chris has some of the cleanest design assets out there. Having lean and organized Illustrator files is going to be a key trait of Flex/Flash projects moving forward as Flash Catalyst become a more integral part of the designer/developer workflow. A detailed explanation of how design was part of the overall product workflow is explained in the ADC article linked above.

Community Collaboration

Also launched today is an Adobe Cookbooks site dedicated to WorkflowLab. The site allows user to share their workflows with the community. We encourage you to download Workflow lab, create a new workflow or extend a Workflow Starting Point and share it with the community. There are so many ways to “skin a cat” the more we share the better off our lives will be as developers, designs, product managers, and executives. Start sharing your workflow recipes here.