K2 Product Management

K2 4.5 Update

2009-12-04T23:36:00Z

Hello,

Many of you are probably aware that K2 4.5 is our next release of the K2 platform, and will include K2 blackpearl, K2 blackpoint, and K2 connect - all of which will be released simultaneously.

We're about to hold a limited beta this month (December 09) with a few key customers and our Insiders around the world to validate installation and application scenarios across a wide range of environments. Then in January we plan to open the beta to all current customers, so definitely watch for that announcement.

Since the SharePoint conference in October, where we demonstrated our support for SharePoint 2010 along with a couple of new technologies, we've been wrapping up the remaining features of K2 4.5 and making sure that it's ready for beta. Some of the things you'll see include:

The Configuration Analysis Tool - helps you verify your installation (and even correct some problems just by clicking a button!)
A much more powerful K2 Designer for SharePoint, where you can insert inline functions, query and filter SharePoint SmartObjects, send customized e-mail notifications, and create dynamic processes that reflect your business process
Local reporting which does not require SQL Reporting Services
Memory and performance improvements, across design time and runtime
Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL 2008 R2 CTP, and (finally) Visual Studio 2008 support
And much more....

Keep an eye on www.k2.com for videos detailing some of the new features in K2 4.5, and watch your inbox for the availability of K2 4.5 beta early next year.

Until next time,

The K2 PM team

K2 and SharePoint 2010

2009-10-26T22:15:00Z

At the 2009 Microsoft SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas, K2 announced our plans for integrating K2, Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010. For those of you who couldn’t make it to the conference or didn’t get a chance to see one of our sessions, below is a summary of our plans. For those of you that were able to attend the conference, a big thank you to everyone who took the time to visit us at the booth and in our sessions. We really enjoyed talking to all of you and getting your feedback!

K2 blackpearl, K2 blackpoint and SharePoint 2010

Approximately 60 – 90 days after the release of SharePoint 2010 RTM, K2 will be providing a set of K2 components for SharePoint that will support SharePoint 2010. These components will be available to both K2 blackpearl and K2 blackpoint customers and will allow you to create and run K2 blackpearl and K2 blackpoint processes and applications within a SharePoint 2010 environment. This update will also provide the K2 Designer for SharePoint in your SharePoint 2010 environment.

K2 and New SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 Functionality

Outside of our support for existing K2 blackpearl and K2 blackpoint processes in the SharePoint 2010 environment, we’re working on new integration points that will come out in a future release of the K2 software. We don’t have release dates for this new functionality yet, but we do want to give you a peek at some of the things we’re working on. Read on for just a few of the things we’re looking into.

K2 and Business Connectivity Services

SharePoint 2010 includes an updated version of the Business Data Catalog, known as Business Connectivity Services (BCS). BCS provides read/write access to external data from line-of-business (LOB) systems, Web services, databases and other external systems within SharePoint 2010. K2 will make use of the new BCS functionality in the following ways:

Use BCS to surface K2 workflow data in SharePoint
Use BCS to surface K2 blackpearl and K2 connect data in SharePoint
Access BCS data in K2 workflows, rules, forms, reports and via the K2 ADO.NET provider

K2 and Outlook 2010

Outlook 2010 provides more customization options to build custom solutions within the Outlook environment. K2 will use this extensibility to deploy the K2 worklist as an Outlook 2010 Solution, allowing users to action tasks from within Outlook. Below are a few screenshots of some of our R&D work around this solution.

Figure 1: The standard K2 worklist with the “Take to Outlook” icon

Figure 2: A K2 worklist item within Outlook 2010

K2 and the Office 2010 Backstage View

The Office 2010 client applications include a new view for functionality that was previously on the Office menu button. Things like saving, printing and options have all been moved to the Backstage View. K2 is looking at ways to take advantage of this new view and one of the things we’re investigating is showing the progress of a workflow that is associated to an individual Word document. In the screenshot below, you’ll see a preliminary example of how we’ll use the Backstage View to show workflow information for a Word document, in this example, an Expense Claim document going through an Approval process.

Figure 3: K2 workflow tab in the Office Backstage View for a Word document

Additional SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 Investments

In addition to what we’ve shown above, we’re working on several other integration areas. Below are a few of the areas we’re looking into:

SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 integration
- Enterprise Content Management including document sets, Excel services, Word services and conversion services
- Records management and information policy
- PerformancePoint for dashboards, KPI and analysis
- SAP integration modeling
For the Developer
- .NET 4.0 integration
- VS2010 integration (WF4, VSTO and TFS)
- Claims-based Authentication

As you can see, K2 is busy with lots of great new functionality for the upcoming SharePoint 2010 release. We’ll keep you posted on our work as we progress into next year.

Until next time,

K2 Product Management Team

Introducing the K2 Knowledge Center

2009-08-31T17:06:47Z

We’ve been quiet for awhile, but we’re working on some exciting stuff that we want to share with you. In the next several months you’ll see posts on updates to K2 blackpearl and K2 blackpoint, our work with SharePoint 2010 and some great tips and tricks from the labs team, so stay tuned. In today’s post, we’d like to introduce the new K2 Knowledge Center website to you. The new site’s URL is http://help.k2.com.

Our K2 Knowledge Base system has been around for several years, providing customers with access to important information and updates regarding our products. We’ve received some great feedback on how to make the site work better for you, and we’ve made sure to incorporate it into the new K2 Knowledge Center. Below are just a few of the new features.

New Look and Feel

The new K2 Knowledge Center has a whole new look and feel that maps more closely to the K2.com site. Simple navigation allows you to access the information you need for the product you’re interested in very quickly.

Improved Search

Our search function on the site has drastically improved so you can be assured that you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for. Search via keywords or specific KB numbers. You also have the ability to filter your search results to narrow your search even more.

Product Support Content

As with the original Knowledge Base website, we’ve included all our Knowledge Base articles for K2 blackpearl, K2 blackpoint, K2 connect and K2.net 2003. In addition, you’ll have access to all the available product downloads, whitepapers and compatibility matrices for each product. To access a particular KB by number, for example KB000351, type in http://help.k2.com/KB000351.aspx.

Product Help Files

You’ve been asking for it, and now it’s available – product Help files online. Access all product documentation and view it right from your browser.

Product Training

Another big request – our training material. Available for you to use for self-paced training if you can’t make it to one of our instructor-led classes.

Those are just a few of the highlights of the new site. Log on using your current K2 Customer Portal account and take a look around. If you don’t have a current K2 Customer Portal account, you’ll still be able to access our publicly-available whitepapers. As always, we love to hear any feedback you have for us, so feel free to send us your comments. Just use the handy “Web site feedback” link at the bottom of every page.

Until next time,

The K2 Product Management Team

Welcome to K2 [blackpearl]

2007-06-08T02:47:00Z

Welcome to the K2 [blackpearl] LABS Team Blog. LABS is responsible for the R&D of blackpearl and this blog is where we will be sharing technical information on K2 [blackpearl] including our experiences, architectural decisions, insights on how things work, and how to extend the platform.

I'm writing this blog flying on an incredible high, and even though I'm literally 30,000 ft in the air on my way to Tech Ed in Orlando, wait a second, we…lost…cabin…pressure, can't…breath…, ok, whew that was close, now I’m back at 30,000 feet, but that’s not the reason. You see, I’m the Technical Product Manager for K2 and yesterday I had the pleasure of releasing K2 [blackpearl] Beta 2 to beta testers worldwide. Beta 2 is near feature complete and for all of you not in the beta program, this means RTM is not too far away. I can’t wait to get K2 [blackpearl] out there and change the way you build applications and business processes, allowing you to solve problems otherwise not possible to do without man years of coding. And as if releasing the software wasn’t enough, we simultaneously launched K2 Underground yesterday too! K2 Underground is a full-fledged community site for sharing everything K2 – experiences, thoughts, code samples, product content, etc. Thanks to everyone who has helped us ensure that K2 [blackpearl] is the product you’ve been waiting for.

So I’ll be at Tech Ed this week hanging out at our booth in the partner pavilion. I look forward to meeting everyone in the K2 community as we bring K2 [blackpearl] to market. Stop by if you’re here to see K2 [blackpearl] in action. And remember to swing by our K2 Underground Launch Party on Wednesday at 7:30 at the Hard Rock Café. We’ll be serving up food and beverages all night.

Regards,
Anthony Petro
Technical Product Manager