Ramble On

TechEd EMEA 2008 Competition Winners

nicholas.kotze@k2workflow.com — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:03:00 GMT

TechEd 2008 comes to an end and we wrapped up the final day by announcing the competition winner Anders Mikkelsen from Carlsberg IT. It was a great turn out with many of the delegates showing their support for K2 by wearing their K2 branded shirts.

It was a very successful event and we hope to see you at TechEd 2009 in Berlin.

Hola from tech-ed 2008

nicholas.kotze@k2workflow.com — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:54:00 GMT

What a great week it has been so far. We are on day 4 and it is still very busy here at Tech-Ed for developers 2008.

Microsoft is doing a great job in highlighting their new technology set and we have had some great insight into Oslo, Dublin, WF 4.0, Silverlight 2 and many others.

The most impressive session has without a doubt been the one that highlights our K2 connect integration with SAP, Siebel and Oracle in a session entitled “Consuming and Building WCF LOB Adapters” given by Markus Dopp.

Otherwise I have posted a picture below that shows how crazy things have been here. It has been great seeing my colleagues spreading the word of K2 and it is awesome being part of it all.

Update from Microsoft TechEd Developers 2008 (Barcelona, Spain) - Part 1

Shaun — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:42:00 GMT

Greetings from Barcelona!

Microsoft Tech·Ed EMEA 2008 Developers is the Microsoft premier technical education conference just for developers. For five days, more than 4,000 peers have countless opportunities to explore about the latest cutting-edge technologies from Microsoft and K2.

The K2 crew for Microsoft TechEd Developers is made up of:

Andrea Girlanda
Anthony Molyneux
Nic Kotze
Shaun Leisegang

The K2 crew were off to an early start on Monday morning - 4AM early - and were subjected to some hard manual labour, well some of us at least anyway.

The K2 booth is situated at Stand E1/2 in the Exhibition Centre at CCIB in Barcelona and in no time the crew were all setup at and ready to kick off Microsoft TechEd Developers 2008.

This year on the K2 booth we are demonstrating three different products:

K2 blackpoint
K2 blackpearl
K2 connect

As always we have loads of giveaways at the booth including the infamous K2 green light up bouncing balls, K2 t-shirts and K2 DVD's including the K2 blackpoint Beta 2 installation files. As well as that people can stop past the booth and come and enter our competition to win an Archos Media Tablet which will be drawn on Friday 14 November 2008 at 13h00.

As always we have bumped into many of our partners, customers and met many prospective customers who are just excited as us about the K2 platform.

This year K2 and Microsoft hosted the Microsoft TechEd EMEA BPM Briefing which was a great success and included some talks from the likes of David Chapell (Independent Analyst), Thomas Reimer (Microsoft Business Development Manager) and Mark Berman (Microsoft Director of the Connected Systems Division).

Tonight is the K2 team will be at the UK Welcome Party which is being hosted at:

BROADBAR
Aribau,191
Barcelona

So we look forward to seeing some of you there.

I am off now to present K2 blackpoint at Presentation Theatre 3 located in the Exhibition Centre so feel free to come along and see the following session:

Microsoft Silverlight Designer for Microsoft SharePoint

That's it for the moment and more from Andrea, Anthony and Nic tomorrow...

Adios.

Tech Ed EMEA BPM Briefing Scheduled for 11 November 2008

Shaun — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 09:08:00 GMT

Tuesday 11 November 13:30 -18:15

AC Barcelona Hotel, 3^rd Floor

(Attached to the CCIB)

The Microsoft Business Process Alliance will be sponsoring a briefing on Microsoft’s Business Process Management (BPM) strategy, discussing how we partner with ISVs to build high value solutions, what developers need to know to leverage these solutions and reviewing a number of significant product announcements from the last 60 days.

13:30-14:45 David Chappell

MICROSOFT AND BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT (BPM): A TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW

What is BPM, and why should developers care? How does BPM relate to SOA? And what can you really do today with BPM technologies? This session takes a look at these questions, focusing on what’s available for Windows-oriented architects and developers.

15:15 – 16:30 Thomas Reimer and Shaun Leisegang

BUILDING BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS WITH MICROSOFT AND THE BUSINESS PROCESS ALLIANCE

The vision of Business Process Management or BPM has much promise, but has yet to achieve mainstream adoption due to expensive tools and steep learning curves. This session will demonstrate how Microsoft’s people-ready business process platform, including SharePoint, BizTalk Server, Visio and InfoPath can be quickly combined with Blackpearl, a .Net workflow application from K2, to provide a complete, end to end BPM solution.

17:00 – 18:15 Mark Berman

ASK US ANYTHING: A ROADMAP REVIEW WITH THE LEADERS OF MICROSOFT’S BP AND SOA STRATEGY

One of the key product planners in Connected Systems Division at Microsoft will review the announcements that have been made, explaining how they have formed a comprehensive vision for BPM and will enable developers to implement these solutions in real-world situations.

Live from Tech.Ed 2008 - PT6

jonno — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:44:01 GMT

At the K2 booth this week we have been running a competition to give away an Archos Media Tablet. The competition was in fact a K2 blackpearl process and allowed delegates to enter their details in an InfoPath Forms Server form that started the competition process when submitted. The process assigned them a task to answer a question about K2 blackpearl, K2 blackpoint or K2 connect. The competition received some fantastic attention and was a great way for delegates to understand how easy it is for people to work with a K2 blackpearl process.

The winner of the competition was Martin Harris from the British Heart Foundation, so a big congratulations to Martin.

The competition will be running again next week so if you are attending Tech Ed EMEA Developers next week come on down to the K2 booth (E1 & E2) and have a chat with the team and of course enter the competition.

It's been great fun this week and we've had some really good interest in all three K2 products. So from Dave, Andy, Steve and myself it's adiós from Tech Ed in Barcelona.

Live From Tech.Ed EMEA 2008 - Pt5

jonno — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:24:14 GMT

At Tech Ed this week K2 had to opportunity to run two sessions at the sponsor's theatres and, as Dave pointed out in an earlier post, these two sessions were some of the most keenly attended across all such sessions. This is quite a feet and testament to what K2 has to offer as we were competing directly with lunch. If you can draw someone away from a free meal to watch a presentation and demo then you must be doing something right.

We used these two presentation slots to show K2 blackpoint and it's easy, no code approach to delivering workflow for SharePoint. Below are a couple of the slides that we showed and pictures from Thursday's session.

Live from Tech.Ed EMEA 2008 - PT4

jonno — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 15:45:35 GMT

Here's some video content from Tech Ed in Barcelona.

Jonno presenting K2 blackpoint.

The K2 booth.

Andy weaving some blackpoint magic.

How to get the K2.net 2003 templates in K2 for Visual Studio

Shaun — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:23:00 GMT

Hi All,

I was asked the other day on how to get the K2.net 2003 templates in K2 for Visual Studio so I thought I would write a quick blog post on it, so here we go:

Install K2.net 2003

Download the K2.net 2003 install from the K2 Customer and Partner Portal
Copy this on to your K2 blackpearl environment and extract the zip file
Launch "K2.net 2003 Setup.exe" and this will launch the K2.net 2003 installer
Click through the install wizard until you get to the "Custom Setup" page
Deselect "K2.net 2003 Server Components" and "K2.net 2003 Service Manager" which will leave only "K2.net 2003 Studio" and select "Install"
Open the K2.net 2003, create a new solution, a new project and a new process
Drag some of the K2.net 2003 templates onto the new design canvas and verify the templates are working

Configure K2 blackpearl to see the K2.net 2003 templates

Once the installation has completed located the following file:

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\CONFIG\machine.config

Open "machine.config" and located the following section:

<sourcecode.configuration>

<managerConfigFile>c:\program files\k2 blackpearl\bin\ConfigurationManager.config</managerConfigFile>

</sourcecode.configuration>

Change this to the following:

<sourcecode.configuration>

<managerConfigFile>c:\program files\k2 blackpearl\bin\ConfigurationManager.config</managerConfigFile>

<templateConfigFile>C:\Program Files\K2.net 2003\Bin\K2Studio.config</templateConfigFile>

</sourcecode.configuration>

Note: Ensure that the templateConfigFile path above is valid on your environment
Open up K2 for Visual Studio and a K2 blackpearl workflow process file (.kprx)
Right click on the toolbox and select "Reset Toolbox"
At the prompt select "Yes"

There you go, you should have all your K2.net 2003 templates ready to go!

Live from Tech.Ed EMEA 2008 - Pt3

jonno — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 14:14:42 GMT

Everybody at Tech Ed EMEA 2008 loves.....

Lunch...

XBox...

Lewis Hamilton...

Barcelona...

Free Stuff...

K2!

Live from Tech.Ed EMEA 2008 - pt2

jonno — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:52:37 GMT

Hola again from Barcelona.

Day 3 and we have given away a whole box of the K2 bouncing balls! This in turn means that a fair majority of delegates are wandering round the arena like 5 year old kids. :) Everyone is asking where to get their balls! This has drawn a great deal of attention to the K2 stand and the real excitement is without doubt around K2 blackpoint. It is a catchy product and with the position of our stand this year opposite Microsoft SharePoint it links perfectly. I believe we should expect a real demand for K2 blackpoint and with some successful projects the opportunity to up sell to blackpearl.

Following the conference we should all be aiming to promote blacklpoint to keep the momentum going!

Our speaker slot this year was considered so far as the most popular attended slot by the Microsoft event managers and aside from the give-away's many of the audience participants came over to the stand to understand in more detail what both blackpioint and connect could offer them in their organisations.

All for now and a follow up later this week after the UK drinks party this evening! :)

Over and out.

Dave

Live from Tech.Ed EMEA 2008

jonno — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 08:58:12 GMT

Hola from Barcelona! K2 is here in the lovely city of Barcelona, with its fantastic weather, for Tech.Ed EMEA 2008. This week is IT Professionals and Team K2, Dave, Steve, Andy and myself are here all this week with Andrea, Nic, Anthony and Shaun running the show next week for the Developers.

After our 4 am wake up call and the early morning flight from London to Barcelona we spent yesterday setting up the K2 booth (E1 & E2) and preparing for the two weeks ahead. Booth setup was remarkably simple thanks to all the great work that Sharm had done in preparing everything over the past weeks. We are sad to report that we did have one casualty with our tablet PC currently suffering from a bad case of stage fright.

With the booth setup and the team primed we had the opening event drinks yesterday evening and the response was excellent. Andy and his K2 blackpoint demonstrations were the stand out attraction with Steve amazing the crowd with the power and simplicity of K2 connect close behind.

If you are at Tech.Ed either this week or next then come along to the K2 booth we are booth E1 & E2 directly across from the Office SharePoint Server 2007 booth. Come along and say hi, ask us a question, have a look at K2 blackpoint, K2 blackpearl or K2 connect and make sure you enter the competition to win an Archos Media Tablet. You maybe even lucky enough to grab one of the highly sought after K2 bouncy balls.

K2 blackpearl and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4 Integration - Chapter 0

jonno — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 11:12:00 GMT

So some time ago I promised a series on integrating K2 blackpearl with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4, well here it is. This series of posts will discuss a number of ways in which you can integrate Dynamics CRM 4 with K2 blackpearl enabling you to rapidly build process-driven applications that span the organisation, its people, its services, its information and systems.

This series of posts is a work in progress and by no means a "definitive guide" on the subject. The idea of these posts is to begin by simply implementing a point style solution and hopefully over time evolve these into a more robust, repeatable framework (fingers crossed).

Some of the key questions I'll be looking to answer during this series include:

* How do you start a K2 process from within Dynamics CRM 4?

* How do you access a K2 tasks in Dynamics CRM 4?

* How do you use the Dynamics CRM 4 interface for a client events?

* Can I view the View Flow diagram from within a Dynamics CRM 4 user interface?

* How do you action a worklist item from within a Dynamics CRM 4?

* How do I get access to Dynamics CRM 4 entity data in K2 blackpearl processes & K2 SmartObjects?

To address these questions the agenda as it stands at the moment is as follows:

Chapter 1 - Initiating K2 blackpearl Processes

Chapter 2 - Leveraging the CRM UI for Client Events

Chapter 3 - Exposing Actions in CRM forms

Chapter 4 - Completing Client Events in CRM forms

Chapter 5 - Exposing the K2 blackpearl Worklist

... and more to come.

Dynamics CRM 4 Service Broker - Alpha

Together with Seb, I have been working on developing a Dynamic CRM 4 Service Broker to expose the CRM 4 entity model in K2 blackpearl and thereby allowing you to create K2 SmartObjects on top of that. This has been a side project of mine for some time and in an effort speed up its development and generally improve the quality of the end result I will be releasing the source code to the community via K2 Underground in the next couple of days.

I look forward to all the CRM 4 experts that I know we have in the K2 Community contributing to this and making it a key K2 blackpearl asset. If you'd like to contribute or have any feedback then please get in touch with me through K2 Underground.

UPDATED: The Dynamics CRM 4 Service Broker source code can now be found on K2 blackmarket.

K2 blackpearl™ 0807 (4.8210.1.0) is now available!

Shaun — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 09:44:00 GMT

K2 blackpearl™, the centerpiece of the new K2 platform, has the K2 blackpearl 0807 (4.8210.1.0) release now available.

The 0807 release focused on greater stability and better performance than ever before. It includes various enhancements and performance increases for the K2 Workspace, the K2 Designer for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, and the K2 blackpearl Workflow Server to name but a few. It also includes post-0803 patches and bug fixes. New exciting features included in this release are Out of Office functionality and K2 Interop!

OUT OF OFFICE
The K2 Out of Office feature enables a user to share specific worklist items or their entire worklist with other users. The user, the out of office participant, will be able to share current and future work items with designated colleagues, and redirect all remaining items to others by creating exception rules. The additional column on the K2 Worklist allows users to differentiate between their own and the absent colleague's worklist items. This functionality ensures that important and urgent work items receive prompt attention, regardless of someone being away from their desk.

K2 INTEROP (Moving Process Definitions from K2.net 2003 to K2 blackpearl – CLIENT SIDE)
K2 Interop (short for interoperability) is the ability for K2.net 2003 process (.kpr) files to be opened in the K2 Designer for Visual Studio that ships with K2 blackpearl. It is a client-side, design-time functionality that allows converted K2.net 2003 and hybrid (K2.net 2003 and blackpearl) processes to be deployed to K2 blackpearl. With the release of K2 blackpearl, organizations with an investment in K2.net 2003 may want to leverage the advantages of the new platform and migrate their existing business processes from the old platform to the new. From a technology perspective, K2.net 2003 is distinctively different to K2 blackpearl, and K2 blackpearl offers a whole new feature set however still supporting the same K2.net 2003 features moving forward. As a result the divide between K2 blackpearl and K2.net 2003 is bridged by supporting K2.net 2003 features within the K2 blackpearl environment using K2 Interop

MIGRATION (Moving existing K2.net 2003 Process Instances to K2 blackpearl – SERVER SIDE)
K2 blackpearl 0807 is now migration-ready. The migration utility will be released in the next few weeks and is NOT available immediately. It is important to note that you will require K2 blackpearl 0807 to use the Migration Utility. The Migration capability should not be confused with K2 Interop. Migration is the physical migration of data from K2.net 2003 to K2 blackpearl. This is a server-side, runtime functionality enabled by a separate utility that migrates database records from K2.net 2003 to K2 blackpearl.

NEW ACTIVE DIRECTORY SERVICE
The New Active Directory Service provides new objects and methods to access information from Active Directory for easy access and use of information to help create business processes and workflows in K2 blackpearl. This service surfaces information from AD and has a great number of performance enhancements and added functionality along with the functionality contained in the original Service, however it does not replace the original one.

PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENTS
Numerous performance enhancements have been implemented. Some of the highlights are as follows. Workflow Server Performance

> Improved processes execution
> Worklist & Worklist Item performance
> Worklist enhanced paging and filtering capabilities
> More granular selection on Workflow Reporting SmartObjects
> Improved memory usage on K2 Designer for Visual Studio
> Improved memory usage when starting processes and finishing work list items
> Improved batch execution of K2 processes
> SmartObject Performance (runtime execution)
> SmartObject Server data handling enhancements

ENHANCEMENTS ON K2 WIZARDS
Some changes have been made to the functionality which resides behind the scenes of the K2 Wizards – specifically the items used for Microsoft SharePoint Server integration. These wizards now leave a smaller footprint on the process definition (.kprx) files, resulting in smaller file sizes and better memory management in the different designers available for K2 blackpearl.

DOCUMENTATION
Several additions and enhancements have been made to the K2 blackpearl Documentation. The key areas of improvement are as follows.

OVERALL DOCUMENTATION
Certain topics of the K2 blackpearl documentation has been updated and new topics added. New or updated topics are marked with an asterisk image in the Table of Contents

The following sections contain new or updated information:

> K2 Concepts - Content Fields
> K2 Wizards - Chaining wizards
          > Mail Event
          > IPC Event
          > SharePoint Records Management Wizard
          > Deploy Project Wizard
> K2 SmartObject Integration - SmartObject Association
> K2 for Visual Studio - K2 Design Canvas
> K2 Interop
> K2 Workspace - Management Console
          > Out of Office
          > Standard Reports
          > User Preference
> K2 Developer Reference - Architecture of K2 Platform
          > Users
> Extending the K2 Platform

Please take the time to review the latest K2 blackpearl 0807 (4.8210.1.0) Release Notes and product documentation before installing 0807 to ensure you understand the enhancements, fixed issues, and outstanding known issues.

For installation, we urge you to look at the Release Notes prior to Installation! There are two issues that you should be aware of before installing 0807 that may, depending on your current blackpearl installation, overwrite custom configurations.

DOWNLOAD K2 [BLACKPEARL] 0807 (4.8210.1.0)
K2 [blackpearl] 0807 (4.8210.1.0) is available at https://portal.k2workflow.com/downloads/bp/Default.aspx.
License keys can be obtained at
https://portal.k2workflow.com/licensekey/Default.aspx.

The page can also be found via the Support > License Key Request > License Key menu on portal. The 0807 installer is slipstreamed, so if K2 blackpearl is not already present, the installer will install K2 blackpearl with the 0807 updates.

SUPPORT
Please use the customer portal to open support tickets and/or contact your local support offices to report any issues. Additionally, the K2 blackpearl public forum on K2 Underground is available for community-based discussions: http://k2underground.com/forums/ default.aspx?GroupID=21. Note: K2 Underground is a community Web site and should not be used for production support issues or for logging bugs.

InfoPath - You have made changes to the form that have not been processed

nicholas.kotze@k2workflow.com — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:29:00 GMT

Sometimes in InfoPath Forms Server when submitting your form you will get an irritating information box which comes up and says: You have made changes to the form that have not been processed. We will process the changes and show the form again. After that you have to click "Submit" again.

You then have to click ‘Submit’ again for the form to submit .

To get rid of this message, and I know you want to, do the following:

Go to menu item ‘Tools’ then select 'Form Options'. Select on the list on the left 'Compatibility'.
Select the option to 'Design a form template that can be opened in a browser or InfoPath'
Now go to your form, select the control that is causing the problem. Right click on it and select 'Properties'
Go to tab 'Browser Forms' and change Post Back Settings to 'Always'. Note this tab would not have been here had we not changed the Compatibility options.

I am sure this will help someone someday :)

Creating a K2 Worklist in CRM4

nicholas.kotze@k2workflow.com — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:16:00 GMT

This is one way to do it, which will add a menu item to the left hand side of CRM4.0 for CRM users to access their K2 Worklist.

Step 1 - Create a web application pointing to your K2 worklist.

Firstly, create a web page that will display the worklist using the K2 API (contact your K2 partner or consultant for the code on how to do this). I normally just make a virtual directory under 'Default Web Site' in IIS an point it to the files with the worklist page. Don't forget to disable 'Enable Anonymous Access' and enable 'Integrated Windows Authentication'.

Step 2 - Add icons to CRM
Add some nice looking icons into the CRM _imgs folder. You will need a big and a small version. Feel free to use these ones as they fit perfectly into the CRM file structure. The _imgs folder is usually found in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server\CRMWeb\_imgs Note: Your file path could be different

Step 3 - Export the SiteMap.xml

In CRM4.0 click on Settings/Customizations - Export Customizations
Select 'Site Map' and click 'Export Selected Customizations'

Step 4 - Edit the customizations.xml

Add the following code to where you want the K2 Menu item to appear on the left. Note, I have a web page pointing to my worklist
at http://localhost/Worklist/Default.aspx, your URL may be different.

Step 5 - Import the customization.xml changes

In CRM4.0 click on Settings/Customizations - Import Customizations
Browse to your Customizations.xml file and press 'Upload'
Select Site Map and click 'Import Selected Cusomizations'

Finally

Close and Open CRM4.0 and you should see your new menu item with the worklist. Hopefully it looks something like the below image.