When I try to deploy the project, I get the following error in Visual Studio:

It refers to the following line in the <myprojectname>.msbuild xml file (it's the last line before the </project> closing tag):

<UsingTask TaskName="SourceCode.DeploymentTasks.SmartObjectServices.WorkflowReportingServiceTask" AssemblyFile="Bin\SourceCode.DeploymentTasks.dll" />

The problem really occurs during the deployment, not the building:

Any idea about what should be done to solve this?

I've just found a workaround: in the SmartObjects Association wizard (in the "wizard bar"), I unchecked the "Create Workflow Reporting SmartObjects", re-deployed the project, and it succeeded.

However, I don't have the final explanation about the reason of the error. And I cannot use the workflow reporting smartobjects.

We have a similar problem.

On a fresh install of K2 Black Pearl server & Client software I created the simplest project I could within Dev Studio (1 activity, 1 event) and when I try to deploy I get the following error:

Error 1 Task ErrorSystem.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
   at SourceCode.DeploymentTasks.FormsGeneration.ClientEventDeploymentTask.HasPublishedWebsite()
   at SourceCode.DeploymentTasks.FormsGeneration.ClientEventDeploymentTask.Execute()...

Unchecking the suggested boxes had no effect (and we need the Smart objects anyway).

Any help would be appreciated, as we have yet to demonstrate a single useful feature of K2 BP to those that paid the bill for it

Have you applied the latest Hotfix? (a new one has been released yesterday)

I've heard of similar problems (it has nothing to do with SmartObjects) before, and the workaround consisted in..... deleting the activity and addind a new one.

A hotfix newer than 2.01 which was released 10th of October?

If yes, where did you find it?

Sincerely,
Cato Antonsen
 

No, my mistake... Sorry for the disappointment!

• We already had hotfix 2 installed.
• We already had Visual Studio 2005 Web Deployment Projects installed.
• We now have FPE extensions active on the server (was not mentioned in the manuals, but was suggested by a K2 staff member at another client site, having same problem).
• We have manually installed SourceCode.Workflow.Runtimeservices.Objects in the GAC (suggested by a K2 staff member at another client site, with the same problem).

As we are completely new to K2, we have no clue what the cause is. The error message is not helpful in determining if it is a client, server or config issue.

What has occurred to me is that we could try a trivial VS 2005 K2 sample project (assuming they are portable). Are there any sample K2 VS 2005 projects about?

Suggestions welcomed.

Hallo, We are having the same problem here on our testing enviroment.

• We had a lot of process running on K2 2003 before and like to give K2 Black Pearl a trail run.
  
• We have installed the K2 blackpearl Hotfix 2.01 (4.7281.1.0) on our server and on the PC's running Visual Studio 2005.
• It is possible to deploy a K2 Solution to the K2 server as long as we don't use the "Forms Generation Client Event" in visual studio and it is possible to complete the whole process that was deployed using the aspx forms we manually created.
  
• As soon as we add this component to a process we get the same error: "Task ErrorSystem.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object at SourceCode.DeploymentTasks.FormsGeneration.ClientEventDeploymentTask.HasPublishedWebsite() at SourceCode.DeploymentTasks.FormsGeneration.ClientEventDeploymentTask.Execute()"
  
• It looks like it is something todo with the .msbuild file in the obj\Debug\deployment folder that might contain some invalid generated text or there might be a Environment variable that is not set on the K2 server, not sure...
  

You don't have any idea yet what might be causing this problem, or how to resolve it. It is possible to design + run the whole test process we have without this component and design each aspx page and using c# code to set and read datafields, but then we could rather stay with using K2.2003, we need to find out how to use SmartObjects correctly. We still need to demo some real working examples of our own of what makes K2 BlackPearl better than the previous 2003 version. But solar we are not having much luck.

You also don't maybe know of a other site or documentation/training material that explains and show step by step how to create/use SmartObjects correctly using a much more simplified example. (We are using SmartObjects, but because of a lack of knowledge on how they should be Used correctly we might be missing some key design issues)

We had a similar problem, but with the help of K2 managed to find the root cause, and a work around (at end of this entry).

In our case the error messsage was "Check and Build Process  
Error: FAILED - c:\program files\k2 blackpearl\Processes\administrator\obj\Debug\Deployment\administrator.msbuild(59,5) : error : SmartObjectServer Exception: Could not publish SmartObjectDefinition to server: Error refreshing ServiceInstance 'WorkflowReportingService'. Service returned : 'Workflow Reporting SO Service: Invalid object name '_procset'.".

The error occcurred for the Deploy operation either in the K2 Web Designer, or K2 Studio (if "Create Workflow Reporting SmartObjects" was left checked).

We found two contributors to the problem:
[1] Our database collation setting was "SQL_Hungarian_Cp1250_CI_AS", and
[2] inconsistent honoring of capitalization when referencing Table and/or Field names in stored procedures.
 
The key value in the above error message is the reference to '_procset' by one of the stored procedures in the K2Server database, which is a reference to one of its tables, a table formally named _ProcSet.

Aspect [1] is related to a "feature" of the SQL_Hungarian_Cp1250_CI_AS collation setting that honors several character combinations of the language that are normally taken together; the letters 'c' followed by 's', the Hungarian "ch" phonetic, is one example, and the letters 's' followed by 'z', the Hungarian 's' phonetic, is another. 

To reproduce, open up SQL Query Analyzer and create a scratch database with SQL_Hungarian_Cp1250_CI_AS collation setting, create a _ProcSet table, then try a few queries on that table with various capitalizations:

create database foo collate SQL_Hungarian_Cp1250_CI_AS
use foo
create table _ProcSet (id int)
select * from _procset (will fail with message "invalid object name '_procset')
select * from _Procset (will fail with same message)
select * from _procSet (will succeed)
select * from _ProcSet (will succeed)

Noting that the "CI" part of the Hungarian collation setting means case-insensitive, we'd first of all expect this to be an SQL bug.  E.g., one would expect "insensitive" to really mean "insensitive" in any/every way.  However, we are not linguistic experts, and the outcome was that the issue was being submitted to Microsoft by K2.  The problem will, of course, occur for any collation setting that includes similar treatments of multi-letter combinations, and procedures or queries don't honor the capitalization of the object names.

Aspect [2] is being addressed by K2.  I.e., some kind of patch or service pack with stored procedures cleaned up to insure that references to objects do honor the capitalization of object names.

The short term workaround:
change the collation setting of both the K2Server and K2ServerLog databases:
alter database K2Server collate Latin1_General_CI_AI
alter database K2ServerLog collate Latin1_General_CI_AI

(K2 was also going to insure their installation documentation specifies requirements for case insensitive collation configurations).