K2 Underground

0807 Re-released!

johnny — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 21:25:00 GMT

New version of K2 0807 has been re-released on the customer portal. New version is 4.8210.2.0. This version contains the following critical fixes. KB000301 - Error when using a K2 Process with a Document View Enabled KB000302 - The Event Instance Report...(read more)

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 - Marketing Lists

Bob Mixon — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:28:00 GMT

So, I am deep into Microsoft Dynamics CRM lately and I thought it would be a good idea for me to blog about my findings. If your asking, how does this relate to SharePoint? Well... it does; there has been a number of customer who have both technologies and want to integrate them. I will be covering this too.

With some help from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Forum members, I now have a better understanding of how Marketing Lists are used.

First and foremost, Marketing Lists are a place-holder to manage a set of Accounts, Contacts or Leads. Once you create a Marketing List to manage a specific type of record, only that type can be stored in it. So if you are working on a campaign that will include records from your Contacts list and Lead list, you will need to create 2 Marketing Lists.

A Marketing list is dynamic from the stand-point that you can add, remove and updates associated records on an as needed basis. However, don't be confused with the belief that the list will be updated based on some filter criteria. For example, you create a Marketing List named Campaign Leads and add all records from your Leads list. Adding a new record to your Lead list will not automatically update the Marketing List. In this circumstance, you will need to update the Marketing List members by re-running the query again.

Here are a couple of links that may help with using Marketing Lists:

Thank you again to those in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Forums for helping me better understand some of the details related to Marketing Lists!

patches for 807

jey — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 07:32:57 GMT

The patch for the infopath formservices issue (KB000305 - InfoPath Form opens in InfoPath client instead of Forms Services) and a few others have been made available on the customer portal. If you have K2 blackpearl 807 installed then please get these patches applied. Posted in General

K2 connect for SAP released

jey — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 17:04:56 GMT

K2 connect for SAP, the second product based on the K2 platform has been released. Connect has been in beta for some time. Connect allows SAP users to get their SAP data workflow enabled using K2 via the K2 Smartobjects technology and surfaced in sharepoint or .NET applications. K2 connect for SAP can be downloaded now. Posted [...]

Making a point with K2 …

jey — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 00:18:48 GMT

K2 blackpoint is a new K2 offering currently in beta. This product is aimed solely at the sharepoint 2007 customer base. Both WSS3.0 and MOSS 2007 are enhanced by this product. Users of blackpoint will get much better workflow experience on sharepoint for low cost. Blackpoint has an upgrade path to K2[blackpearl]. This is a key [...]

MOSS State Workflow Email Escalation Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Apergis) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:54:00 GMT

Scenario

The scenario I have is that I have a state workflow that I am building in Visual Studio and deploying to MOSS. In this human workflow I need to incorporate the concept of raising an escalation email event so when a user has not completed a task in a period of time. I was doing an early proof of concept and found issues with DelayActivity requiring me to install a hotfix. Well I thought I would have everything working and it would be really simple to just throw on an email activity after the delay activity. However I was terribly wrong.

Design

I was basically following a simple pattern where I would add two event driven activities, one that would wait for an action to be taken on the task, and another where a delay activity would wait for a period of time to pass.

Here is what I had for the escalation. Basically after a period of time the delay would end, an email would be sent and then a log would be made. Hey that should be simple?Error Message

At first, I was getting no error messages; nothing in the ULS logs and nothing in the event viewer. Then after doing some playing around I noticed if I disabled the email activity everything would work. So I something was wrong there.

After playing with it a bunch more and I started to get "The e-mail message cannot be sent. Make sure the outgoing e-mail settings for the server are configured correctly." in the workflow log. This was extremely annoying because emails are working in task lists and other places throughout the workflow the SendEmail activity was absolutely working, just not in my escalation.

Well there were numerous things going wrong with using the EmailActivity. After doing some searching I saw that many had given up and just used SPUtilities.SendEmail() or just wrote their own wrapper to use System.Net.Mail but to tell you the truth the SendEmail activity was MOCKING ME. I know that there must be a way to send an email.

Resolution

I was able to find out some of this has to do with the way DelayActivity worked with MOSS and specifically state workflows. All of the issues I was experiencing would not occur in a sequential workflow. When configuring a SendEmail activity that occurs after a DelayAcitivty you need to make sure the it is configured correctly.

A few notes:

The CorrelationToken must be correctly set. It is possible that you may have many tokens in your workflow. You will have on for the token for the WorkflowActivated activity and you may have a different tokens tied to the CreateTask activity (such as my case). Make sure you use the token that is from the WorkflowActivated activty. Otherwise you will get no errors and the workflow will throw an error into the log and give you no information.
If you are trying to set any of the properties of the SendEmail activities in code, stop as you will run into tons of problems. Check out the references below. What you will need to do is create new workflow properties and bind to them like the above screenshot. Then in an event handler you can set the values. If you create an event handler and then try to set SendEmail object directly none of the values will be set and you will get an empty email throwing errors.
Finally in the code of the onSendEmail event handler, you will have limited access to data. I was not able to narrow down why this is occurring (partly because I just do not care anymore). For instance, you may want to put the title of the task into the body of the email. So you may have a SPWorkflowTaskProperties object where you will want to get this data from. Well, I was getting ton null exceptions when trying to do this. I did find that I could use the SPWorkflowActivationProperties and that was good enough at this point.

The following is some code from the onSendEmail handler. Here you will see where I set the attributes I have bound to the SendEmail activity. You will see that I have an object that I use to get data from the InfoPath that is being routed around (beyond scope of this blog entry).


        private void onSendEmail(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            this.EmailTo = _infoPath.ManagerEmail;
            this.EmailSubject = "Reminder - New User Request Task";
            this.EmailBody = "A New User Request for " + _infoPath.FirstLastName +
                "was assigned to you but not completed. " +
                "Please go to the following Task list to complete your assigned task: " +
                NewUserRequestWorkflowProperties.WebUrl + NewUserRequestWorkflowProperties.TaskListUrl;
        }

References

Exploring Eight’0′Seven

jey — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 21:24:40 GMT

K2 workflow definitions use what we call the extender projects behind the scene. These code behinds allow us to work at the .XOML and .CS layers. In 807 you may be surprised to see these projects missing in the VS.NET solution explorer. This is by design and actually the projects are there but they are hidden [...]

Infopath forms services and 807

jey — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:06:53 GMT

If you are using infopath forms services and planning to use 807 in production environments, then dont rush the upgrade. There is an issue that has been recently discovered which forces the form to always open in the infopath desktop client. More info here. There should be a patch on its way. Posted in K2 [...]

0807 and InfoPath Client Event Template

johnny — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:17:00 GMT

As many of you may know, 0807 just got released last week and there's a whole bunch of snazzy stuff inside. However, take note that there is currently a known issue that can cause some problems for those working with Form Services. For a new 0807 process...(read more)

Debug MOSS Workflow in Visual Studio

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Apergis) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 17:45:00 GMT

This blog is very late to be publishing at this point (given I ran into this a long time ago) as many know how to debug a MOSS workflow. All you need to do is:

Make sure that you get a debug build in the gac.
Restart IIS or recycle the SharePoint app pool, which ever you prefer.
In Visual Studio >> Debug >> Attach to Processes… >> select the w3wp.exe.

Now, do not forget to Attach to only the Workflow Code Type.

Apparently you cannot debug workflow and managed code at the same time. Otherwise, you will find yourself closing Visual Studio, bouncing IIS and re-opening Visual Studio just to debug your workflow… Doh!

Updated K2 release

Chris — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 05:06:47 GMT

The new drop of K2 blackpearl has landed – entitled 0807. The last release was 0803 – so not sure what the number means – unless I missed 0804, 0805 and 0806. There’s a swag of improvements and some new features that I’m keen to check out. I’d used an earlier Beta of 0807 [...]

Denver K2 User Group SmartObjects

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Apergis) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:05:00 GMT

I have been asked to speak about SmartObjects at the Denver K2 User Group. I will be doing it virtually. If you like to attend, please tune in. It will be a nice intro into all of the aspects of SmartObjects and if you have any questions, please come with them.

----------------------------

Hello everyone,

The next K2 User Group meeting in Denver is fast approaching and will be held on October 7th from 6pm to 8pm.

The meeting will again be hosted at Baxa located at 14445 Grasslands Dr, Englewood, CO 80112. Here is a map to the Baxa office. There is plenty of parking available around the building and it's fairly close to E470, so please join us in person, if possible. For those of you who cannot attend in person, we will have a Live Meeting session available. This information is located at the bottom of this e-mail.

Please RSVP to me by Friday, October 3rd whether you will be attending in person (so we can plan for food) or via the Live Meeting. If you are interested in receiving these notifications in the future, please register for the Denver User Group on the K2 Underground. If you would prefer to not be contacted again, please let me know so I can remove your name from the list.

Agenda:

6:00 - 6:15 Networking/Refreshments

6:15 - 6:30 Announcements

6:30 - 7:15 Presentation by Jason Apergis from RDA Corporation

7:30 - 7:45 Round Table Discussion

7:45 - 8:00 Meeting Wrap-up

Presentation Summary:
Jason will be talking about the beauty and power of K2 SmartObjects. During this session Jason will be going into the SmartObject basics but will also show you how to create them and their associated ServiceObjects.

Jason Apergis is a software consultant who has lived in the Washington, DC area his entire life. Jason currently works for a Microsoft Gold Partner named RDA Corporation as a technical project manager and has worked for various other consulting firms like BearingPoint and AMS. One of Jason's solutions was nominated as a finalist for a Microsoft solution of the year award in 2006 which integrated K2, BizTalk, SharePoint and InfoPath. Jason completed both his undergraduate and graduate degrees in Information Technology from Virginia Tech. Jason plays ice hockey weekly basis and is both an avid Washington Capitals and Virginia Tech Football fan.

Bring your questions or challenges for a round table discussion after the presentation to discuss with the others in the User Group. Have you used SmartObjects yet? How are you using them? What challenges have you faced?

Live Meeting Information:

Start Time:	Tuesday, Oct 7, 2008 6:00 PM MDT
End Time:	Tuesday, Oct 7, 2008 8:00 PM MDT
Occurrence:	Recurring meeting
Meeting Lobby:	Not enabled
Attendee URL:	https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/scna/join?id=CK6G4W&role=attend&pw=F59%3EKcr
Meeting ID:	CK6G4W
Attendee Entry Code:	F59>Kcr
Location:
Audio:	Two way computer audio conferencing: Off One way computer audio broadcasting: Off Telephone conferencing: On Audio conferencing provider: Other Toll free: +1 (913) 227-1219Toll: +1 (888) 269-6500 Participant code: 994729

Note: please keep your phone on mute until you are ready to speak.

0807 RTM has been released!

johnny — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:13:00 GMT

Just to let everyone know that the new K2 blackpearl 0807 has been released on the customer portal . This is a milestone release as this includes a big bunch of performance and stability enhancements. New features are the Out-of-Office components and...(read more)

K2 blackpearl 0807 Released

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Apergis) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:20:00 GMT

Important news 0807 build of K2 blackpearl, that I previewed here, has been released. There are major changes and bug fixes that have been addressed. Below is the announcement.

K2 blackpearl™ 0807 (4.8210.1.0) is now available!

Greetings K2 Customers!

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.

Exporting SmartObjects from blackpearl

edgardo — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 14:10:30 GMT

If you would like to export SmartObjects from blackpearl, there are two ways.

K2 Object Browser in Visual Studio

The trick here is that you have to have a k2 project open. Once you have the k2 project open, browse to your SmartObject and right click. You will see a menu appear with 'Save to Local'. The only problem is that it will add it directly to the project you currently have open in Visual Studio.

Amazing K2 SmartObject Tool

This is a great tool that is available from the k2underground (Available here). In the 807 build it will be located in the bin directory (Thanks Anthony). It was apparently developed by Janus (one of the brains behind SmartObjects in the k2 product team)

Just open the tool, browse to your SmartObject, right click on the SmartObject and you will get a menu to get to sodx file. The nice thing about this tool is you can also get the xml, execute the SmartObject, and delete the SmartObject.

K2[blackpearl] 807 is here! Go get it!!

jey — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 01:20:57 GMT

K2[blackpearl] 807 has been released. This update is very important to me as it has many improvements and to state a few: 1) superior performance in VS.NET - much faster and efficient memory usage 2) smartobject performance improvements 3) workspace improvements & Out of Office functionality. You can Download it here I expect most customers to update their installations with 807. [...]

Exporting SmartObjects from blackpearl

edgardo — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 14:10:30 GMT

If you would like to export SmartObjects from blackpearl, there are two ways.

K2 Object Browser in Visual Studio

Amazing K2 SmartObject Tool

BAD header errors

jey — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:19:34 GMT

I have a couple of my clients calling about a BAD header error they were getting when submitting their infopath based forms to kick-off K2 workflows. In all cases this was due to their environment library configuration pointing to the wrong service. For some reason the connection string for the Workflow Server has the wrong [...]

MOSS Workflow History Best Practice

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Apergis) — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 18:57:00 GMT

If you are designing a workflow solution in MOSS on of the first things you may think about incorporating into your solution is the Workflow History. The value proposition of using the Workflow History was:

When building workflows there is an activity you can drag right onto the process which will set values into the Workflow History table. It is really simple to use.
Users will be able to see all of the information immediately right there on the screen in the Workflow State page.

However after doing some more thinking and contacting a few of my colleagues I quickly decided not to use it to any great degree. Here are a couple of the issues that are with it.

First, the workflow history table will be cleaned up by SharePoint after a period of time. This time can be configured using the AutoCleanupDays however it will be run at some time. It will not actually delete the logs, but it will delete the log associations to the workflow instance and it will delete any tasks that are associated to the workflow instance.
Second, I got concerned with sizing of the workflow history list in general given the 2,000 item rule for a list. If you use it a lot you will quickly eclipse this and there can be performance issues. So the workflow history will have to have data deleted from it on a regular basis.
Third, in my opinion there is no real good way to search, query or do business reports of this data.
Fourth, since workflows can be removed from a list. Once the workflow is deleted, if you go back to the item the workflow instances will be deleted. This basically means to me that this data is not well managed.

The best practice in my opinion is to use the workflow history if you want to print out some quick information to the user on the workflow page or if you want to use it as a way to do some logging. It should not be used as a solution to satisfy auditing requirements. If you have that as a requirement, I would highly recommend dumping some data out to a custom database which can scale and is easier to query.

References:

Workflow Task Form Data Connections

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Apergis) — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 18:13:00 GMT

Error

While I was working with a state workflow in SharePoint I ran into a problem with make secondary data connections my Task forms. I was getting the infamous "5566 An error occurred accessing a data source".

Background

Well Google was giving my tons of hits on the error but nothing helpful at all. I basically had a custom web service that I needed my Task form to use. Here was the situation:

I had a data connection a web service which I had converted and placed into a Connection Library in SharePoint.
Had changed the form properties to be Full Trust.
When I ran the preview of the InfoPath, the data connections were successful.
Here is where it gets interesting. I was able to deploy the form through central administration (because the form had full trust) and then associated the content type to a form library. When I opened the form as a web enabled form, it worked!

That last bullet completely confused me. Why would it work if I deployed the form manually but when the same InfoPath form was being used in a workflow it would not work?

Solution

After digging at it for a while this is what I found. Data connections that were executed through a rule would work however and data connections that were executed when the form was opened would not. For instance, I had a dropdown that I wanted to be loaded when the form was opened. So when I created the data connection on the last step of the wizard I set it to "Automatically retrieve data when the form is opened". My solution was to clear that checkbox and then go to Tools >> Form Options >> Open and Save >> and press the Rules button in the Open behavior section. I then added a Rule to query the data connection and then everything worked. Really strange…

I am a PC and I work for K2 :)

jey — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 08:39:51 GMT

I love these new set of Ads. Check these out they are getting better and better… Posted in Echo Analysis, General, MS

Task users from a repeating node

jey — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 19:56:26 GMT

Say you have an XML document with the following structure: And you want to assign a task to users from the node <User> of the Repeating node <TaskUsers> In K2, you would set this up as follows: In your Activity which has the client event, click on destination rule: On the wizard page, click the “back” button: Then check [...]

I'll be Speaking at the Orange County SharePoint User Group

Bob Mixon — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:21:00 GMT

This week Wednesday, September 17th, I will be speaking at the Orange County SharePoint User Group meeting.

Improving SharePoint Search Relevancy through Scopes
6:30pm - 8:00pm - QuickStart, Irvine, CA

Organizations struggle with delivering information within the scope and context of business users needs. Understanding scope and contextual search needs can be a daunting task. However, results can be dramatically improved through careful planning, architecture, design, and development techniques.

In this session, you will learn the techniques and best practices required to deliver a SharePoint solution that supports scoping of information. We will cover appropriate architecture, design, and configuration techniques then dive into development. Development topics will include an introduction to search syntax options and the key query classes offered in MOSS, and search object model with a demonstration of executing queries with scope information.

Hope to see you there!

Free Workshop - Case Studies in SharePoint Dashboards by Mark Miller

Bob Mixon — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:41:00 GMT

Case Studies in SharePoint Dashboards is a live, online demo/workshop to show easy, simple ways to display information in SharePoint. This is a free workshop for all subscribers to the EndUserSharePoint.com Weekly Newsletter.

With a basic WSS (Windows SharePoint Services) implementation, you don't have access to Excel Services, KPI web parts or any of the other cool features available to SharePoint Enterprise users. This workshop will concentrate on what is available in WSS and how those features can be used for creating useful, easy to read dashboards from your existing SharePoint libraries and lists.

This presentation is useful for managers, site planners, and Information Workers who have to deal with documents, lists and links stored in SharePoint. Site Managers and Site Collection Administrators will gain tips and tricks for implementing some "not so obvious" features of SharePoint when creating dashboards.

The host of Case Studies in SharePoint Dashboards is Mark Miller, founder and editor of EndUserSharePoint.com. In the past ten years, Mark has traveled throughout North America, Europe and Asia teaching live, in-person workshops at Hewlett-Packard, Charles Schwab, Intuit and Autodesk.

He has been teaching online since 1999 using Centra, Breeze or GoToWebinar.

Perpetually Connecting…

jey — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 06:18:15 GMT

“I’ve got too many cars..I get stuck in my own traffic” Seinfield and “its ok there’s a fire wall” Gates are connecting with real people in this Ad campaign and I tell you they are better than the “I am a Mac and I am a PC” apple Ads. Cant wait for the next episodes. [...]