Sharepoint Designer 2010 BETA Reusable Workflow

Jan 10, 2013 9:26 PM, - Posted by Tommy Segoro

I just played around with Reusable Workflow functionality in Sharepoint Designer 2010. It’s very-very cool I have to say. I really can see the potential with this functionality if all of the bugs are fixed.

Basically what you can do with this is, you can create a Reusable Workflow on a particular site, export it as WSP, restore it into Visual Studio then deploy it to another Sharepoint site.

So in theory, you don’t have to re-create the workflow (unlike MOSS and SP Designer 2007).

However, I’ve found some limitations:

– If you create an IF condition and uses “Current Item” value for checking the value against, there is only a set of limited fields that you can check against: Content Type, Created, Created By, ID, Modified, Modified By and Title.

– It’s still buggy. Workflow that has “Collect Data from User” task doesn’t work properly. I personally uses this functionality heavily.

Collect Data from User Bugs

Below is the list of bugs I found:

– By default if you’re using the default Tasks list, the workflow will simply stop and crash. There was an error message in the workflow history. The workaround for this will be to create a new task list.

– You will not get the nice “collect data” page on the destination site. Somehow it redirects you to the “View Item” (DispForm.aspx) page.

General Bugs

– By default when you first load WSP into Visual Studio, if you open Elements.xml, VS/Sharepoint appends Instantiation URL which if you deploy it to the destination site will create an error when you try to start the workflow manually. The error was: “The workflow template has specified no FormURN for this page”.

Conclusion

For general simple workflow, this functionality has worked really great. It’s just when you start trying to do a bit more complicated stuff (eg. collect data from user, etc), it isn’t that functional. But I’m hopeful that this will be fixed and improved on the released version.

Cheers,

Tommy

Sharepoint 2010 Beta – What Can Be Improved – Part 9 – Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Applications & InfoPath 2010 CRASH

Jan 10, 2013 9:26 PM, - Posted by Tommy Segoro

I created an InfoPath 2010 BETA form then attached an EventChanged event on a drop-down-list.

I did a bit of programming and I then tried to debug my code. Whenever VS hit a break-point or an error IT CRASHED! ARRGHGHGHGH….

See images below:

Before Debugging

During Debugging

Killing the Process

Resolution

When I hit F5, it opened a preview instance of the InfoPath form and created a new worker process INFOPATH.EXE. I had to kill it via Task Manager so that I could go back to the editing mode of Visual Studio.

I hope that this will be fixed on the released version.

Cheers,

Tommy

InfoPath Development in Sharepoint 2010 BETA – No Changes

Jan 10, 2013 9:23 PM, - Posted by Tommy Segoro

I tried to play around with InfoPath 2010 last night and to be honest, I didn’t see anything different from Office 2007. At this stage all I can say is, there is no improvement just yet in terms of InfoPath development.

I’ll try to play around more and post more updates on this article.

Cheers,

Tommy

Sharepoint 2010 Beta – What Can Be Improved – Part 7 – Save List as Template Including Content DOESN’T WORK

Jan 10, 2013 9:22 PM, - Posted by Tommy Segoro

I tried to save a custom list as a list template (STP) and ticked “Include Content”.

When I restored the list template on an another site collection, the content wasn’t there at all.

Cheers,

Tommy

Office 2010 BETA is not Sharepoint 2010 BETA compatible!?!?

Jan 10, 2013 9:21 PM, - Posted by Tommy Segoro

I’ve recently installed Office 2010 BETA and now when I tried to create a new document via Sharepoint, below is what I get:

Hm….has anyone had this problem before?

Cheers,

Tommy