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Laminas Project vs. SharePoint Designer (discontinued)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Laminas Project

    Score7 out of 10
    N/AZend Framework was a PHP framework developed by Zend Technologies and acquired by Rogue Wave Software. The Laminas Project is the community managed Open Source Continuation of Zend Framework managed by the Linux Foundation. Transition initiated after Rogue Wave was acquired by Perforce in 2019.N/A

    SharePoint Designer (discontinued)

    Score3 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft's SharePoint Designer was a tool for developing SharePoint applications that has been discontinued.N/A
    Pricing
    Laminas ProjectSharePoint Designer (discontinued)
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Laminas ProjectSharePoint Designer (discontinued)
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Best Alternatives
    Laminas ProjectSharePoint Designer (discontinued)
    Small Businesses
    Laravel PHP Framework
    Score9.9 out of 10
    .NET
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Laravel PHP Framework
    Score9.9 out of 10
    .NET
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    ASP.NET
    Score9.5 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Laminas ProjectSharePoint Designer (discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (6 ratings)
    4.9
    (17 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Data Sharing and Collaboration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    Data Sources
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Laminas ProjectSharePoint Designer (discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Open Source
    I would say you can use Zend with any project of any size but in a personal experience I would recommend it more for small or medium sized projects. Since the code you will be writing with Zend has more verbosity than the one you can write with other frameworks, that might be a problem to maintain larger projects.
    Incentivized
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    Discontinued Products
    SharePoint does not provide, out of the box, a tool to create / update workflows from web. You have to use SharePoint Designer in order to create them. If you need to implement custom workflows for specific business processes, then SharePoint Designer is well suited. SharePoint Designer allows you to create workflows with task approval, email notifications, assign variables and update SharePoint Lists / Documents properties. In our company, we have created specific workflows for : - Purchase order - RH forms validation like annual employee review - Dematerialized existing forms and validation
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Open Source
    • Excellent interface for databases. I trust that no bad data will accidentally be injected causing the databases to become corrupt or drop.
    • The routing is really great. We have a lot of custom routing and it makes it very easy to add or adjust routes and ensure they're getting where they need to go.
    • Zend provides so much flexibility in the controllers for dealing with the view. It's so easy to customize the view to render just how you want it. Especially when dealing with a request that may or may not be ajax.
    Incentivized
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    Discontinued Products
    • 2013 Workflows - Loops: You can build loops to work while a value (not) equals something, or N number of times. You can insert Parallel Blocks to do multiple things at once, or to watch for multiple things, and when 1 thing finishes, cancels the others and moves to the next step or stage.
    • 2013 Workflows - Stages: Previously all we had were steps, which worked sequentially. With the Concept of Stages, we can create blocks of steps and based on the data collected during those functions, we can tell the workflow to go to a different Stage in the workflow based on a set of 1, or multiple, Conditionals in a transition area after each Stage. Giving you the power to develop multiple entire processes and skipping to the correct part of the workflow, rather than going through 20 conditionals to find out you needed to do action 31.
    • 2013 Workflows - REST API: the "Call HTTP Web Service" is a very powerful tool, but hard to understand if you have never seen it done, or have a guideline. It works very similar to the requirements in PowerShell to connect and get and post data to SharePoint using the Rest API. You can also use this to manage permissions on List Items, Lists, Sites, and Site Collections. Best part is when developed correctly, it is SUPER FAST!
    • Intentionally Building Infinite Loops: I have built multiple review process from Managing Certifications to Updating Published Documentation, that monitors when an Item, based on provided approved metadata, when the "Author" needs to review the document within the given amount of time. They will get e-mails with links asking if changes are needed. If not, it is routed to the Approving Executive, and the Workflow Automatically updates the Metadata to push out the review dates to the next date, based on metadata provided on how how often the document should be reviews. By using conditionals in the transition of stages, it basically starts over, and goes into a parallel block to allow the monitoring of multiple values of metadata to move to the next stage. Very Powerful when you want to automate these types of process. It truly is a "Set It and Forget It" process.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Open Source
    • Zend Framework 2 is overly complex for small projects.
    • Zend Framework 2 documentation sometimes overlooks small details, which means you will need to delve into the code directly.
    • Zend Framework 2 bug fixes on GitHub usually take quite a long time to get patched.
    Incentivized
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    Discontinued Products
    • In the newest version of SharePoint Designer, they have gotten rid of the Design view which makes what used to be quick and easy changes much more code-intensive. This makes it harder for non-IT users and is more risker for all SharePoint Designer users.
    • SharePoint Designer workflows have a lot of functionality, but there are also some crucial limitations, such as not being able to put lookup fields in email subjects or using parenthesis to separate/group logical conditions.
    • Although this goes along with the Design view, there really isn't a good user interface anymore for adding conditional formatting and styles in views/pages.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Open Source
    I absolutely love Zend Framework. However we are using Zend Framework 1 and when we get to the point that we need to go Zend Framework 2 (for PHP namespacing) I may explore other frameworks. When we chose Zend it was the best option for us. I'd like to see if maybe there's a better fit that doesn't have the same complicated overhead of Zend Framework
    Incentivized
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    Discontinued Products
    It is a helpful tool that we use every day.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    Open Source
    Zend is very usable once you learn how to use it. I've had moments where I thought what I want to do isn't possible but I've learned I haven't looked in the correct place yet. Zend is a Catch-22. It's very usable once you know how to use it. But I strongly feel it's worth learning
    Incentivized
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    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Open Source
    Zend Framework has the best (paid) support and ecosystem I've ever seen in a PHP framework. The company has developed many products, including Zend Server, Zend Debugger, and an Eclipse-based IDE that extends the framework to create an entire development platform that can improve developer productivity and software quality while maintaining the clean architecture that characterizes the framework.
    Incentivized
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    Discontinued Products
    Support is good from Microsoft. They are quite responsive when we raise a ticket but SP Designer support will be ended by Microsoft in the near future as they have got new techs like PowerApps and Flow to achieve the same functionality SP Designer does and even more than that.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Open Source
    While Zend Framework is similar to Laravel and Symfony, and seemingly more popular among businesses, I feel like it is harder to use compared to these two. Laravel and Symfony seem more friendly to the developer in terms of documentation and ease of use, though Zend Framework isn't too far behind and can be more powerful.
    Incentivized
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    Discontinued Products
    I haven't used anything else like this. I use different products for workflows and forms, but they aren't listed in the listings for this page. Instead of using it for workflows or forms (deprecated 2 years ago), I use Nintex. For everything else, I have what I need in the Modern version of SharePoint online
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Open Source
    • Overall, Zend PHP Engine has had a positive return on our business objective of creating a medium sized web-application, debugging the application to assess problems before they occur, and to create dynamic API calls via our backend custom software.
    Incentivized
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    Discontinued Products
    • For my needs, I have not found SharePoint Designer useful for my day to day maintenance of SharePoint. It is useful for viewing all the objects that make up the SharePoint site.
    • It is not as intuitive in regard to setting up Workflows. I have yet to use it to set up workflows in SharePoint. Maybe if I needed more complex workflows, it would be beneficial.
    • I like to use SharePoint Designer for moving around files within SharePoint sites.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots