PeteStilgoe.com

K2 Blackpoint K2 Blackpearl does not support single sign on authentication

peter.stilgoe — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:23:59 +0000

FYI Neither K2 Blackpoint or K2 Blackpearl support SSO, they only support Windows authentication. K2 Connect (SAP) makes use of SSO in some aspects.

If you are trying to use in an SSO environment you will see errors similar to:

Unable to cast object of type ‘System.Web.Security.SingleSignOn.SingleSignOnIdentity’ to type ‘System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity’

K2 4.5 Release Candidate Is Now Available

peter.stilgoe — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:32:04 +0000

K2 blackpearl®, K2 blackpoint® and K2 connect® 4.5 Release Candidates now available!

K2 blackpearl, K2 blackpoint and K2 connect have moved into a new era with the introduction of K2 4.5 – the next generation of K2 products!

This release focuses on greater stability and better performance. K2 4.5 still has all the great functionality you’re accustomed to plus great additional features, such as Inline Functions, an updated designer for SharePoint, support for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, memory and performance enhancements, SSL support, a better installation experience, and more.

K2 blackpearl 4.5 and K2 blackpoint 4.5 are now built from a single codebase, which means that all performance and resource-utilization enhancements will be available to all K2 customers. K2 connect has been updated so that it can leverage these enhancements, as well.

K2 4.5 is the fifth minor installment of K2 blackpearl following RTM, SP1, 0803 and 0807. Because K2 blackpearl and K2 blackpoint are now based on the same core components, we’ve decided to bring the product names into sync.

What’s new in the 4.5 releases of K2 blackpearl and K2 blackpoint
• K2 Designer for SharePoint
• K2 Studio
• Improved design and developer experience
• Enhanced end-user experience
• Optimized infrastructure
• Simplified installation experience

1.New support for:
Windows Server 2008, including R2
SQL Server 2008
Visual Studio 2008

2.Non- AD Installation

3.SSL Support

4.Inline Functions

5.Reports
New filters and parameters
Using SmartObject direct execution functionality

6.Performance enhancements to SmartObjects and the K2 Workflow Server

7.In MOSS/WSS K2 configuration Features are deployed as solutions

8.K2 Designer for SharePoint enhancements include:
Inline Functions
SmartObject Filters
Custom Work Item Notification
Process Data Fields
New Wizards

9.Internationalization of the codebase

10.Numerous documentation updates

11.Inclusion of all Updates

Visit www.k2.com for more information

External User Not Recieving Sharepoint Alerts

peter.stilgoe — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:42:37 +0000

I had a problem where external users, in this case hotmail addresses werent recieving Sharepoint Notifications. I was scratching my head but the solution was a simple one, as they normally are….

If you are going to let users outside of your domain receive outgoing email from SharePoint, you may need to enter their domains as valid in SMTP. To do this go to your SMTP server under IIS and right click on Domains. Choose New Domain, and Remote. Add the domain of your users’ email address. If it is going to be a mixed bag, you may need to add several remote domains such as *.com, *.net, *.org, *.co.uk etc etc

Import Excel 2007 Spreadsheet as Sharepoint List Error Method ‘post’ of object ‘IOWSPostData’ failed

peter.stilgoe — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 09:35:48 +0000

If you get the following error Method ‘post’ of object ‘IOWSPostData’ failed, you can fix it by doing the below:

Do a search on you C: drive for a file named: EXPTOOWS.XLA

Open it and Enable Macros

Select the Developer tab and the Visual Bacis or press ALT+11. Same result. You are ready to alter the file.

Search for:

lVer = Application.SharePointVersion(URL)

Add a new line just below:

lVer = 2

Save and exit.

Now try the import again & it should work.

NOTE: this is a problem with excel as opposed to Sharepoint so this would need to be done on all workstations requiring the ability to import Excel 2007 spreadsheets as custom lists.

Sharepoint 2010 User Profile Synchronization Service stuck on starting

peter.stilgoe — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 07:56:47 +0000

For anyone else having this issue it looks like this is an issue with the beta version of Sharepoint 2010 as when using service accounts it appears that the user profile sync just sticks on ‘Starting’ & never actually starts.

To get it started add your service account as a local admin & reboot & you should find it starts OK.

Good job its a beta in a test environment!

No sharepoint search results returned for anonymous users

peter.stilgoe — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:30:07 +0000

CAUSE:
This is a default behavior seen in SharePoint that anonymous users do not get search results. Security trimming prevents anonymous users from seeing items in search by default.

RESOLUTION:
Enable “Always index all ASPX pages on this site” on the site collection.

Perform the following steps:
• Open the SharePoint Site
• Click on Site Actions, Site Settings and Modify Site Settings
• Click on Search Visibility
• Select the option that says “Always index all ASPX pages on this site”
• Perform a full crawl again
• Log into the site anonymously and perform search and you should get search results now

Allowed anonymous access on a Sharepoint list and still get prompted for a login

peter.stilgoe — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:31:25 +0000

If you have enabled anonymous access on your Sharepoint farm and you still get prompted for a login when trying to access a list, it is most likely that your list exists in a ‘Publishing Site’.

This is because by default all publishing sites have a feature called ‘ViewFormPagesLockdown’ activated. This basically provides extra security for internet facing Sharepoint sites by stopping anonymous users viewing pages like AllItems.aspx etc.

If you want anonymous users to be able to view such pages you need to disable ‘ViewFormPagesLockdown’

1 Remove all anonymous access from the site.
2 Deactivate the ViewFormPagesLockdown Feature
3 Make sure that the list inherits its permissions from its parent.
4 Do an IISreset and close all browsers.
5 Wait 60 seconds or so for everything to start backup
6 Turn anonymous access on at the site level
7 Close the browser.
8 Browse to the website as anonymous user.
9 Click on a navigation link to browse to the list in question
10 You should now be able to browse list items as an anonymous user.

Activate Feature:

stsadm -o activatefeature -url -filename ViewFormPagesLockDown\feature.xml

De-Activate Feature:

stsadm -o deactivatefeature -url -filename ViewFormPagesLockDown\feature.xml

K2 The form template cannot be opened in the InfoPath designer, because InfoPath is not installed on the machine

peter.stilgoe — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:24:30 +0000

Go to “Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\InfoPath.exe” in your registry (if infopath.exe does not exist create it), there you will see a “Path” value if you do not then create a new string value with the the name “Path” and in the “Value Data” portion add the path to the infopath exe folder, for example, “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\

Also in the ‘Default’ string add the path with the actual filename ie. “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\infopath.exe”

Now close K2 designer & reopen, you will now be able to edit Infopath forms from within K2

Does K2 Blackpoint (or Blackpearl) work in a HTTPS / SSL environment?

peter.stilgoe — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 08:22:48 +0000

Well I read numerous posts etc but nothing definitive, after speaking to K2 basically there are ’some’ issues running K2 Blackpoint in a HTTPS environment however full SSL support will be introduced in 4.5 release for both K2 Blackpoint & K2 Blackpearl. A formal release date has not been set but they are looking at the end of Q1 2010.

Hope this helps anybody looking into this & hopefully not long to wait !

Powerpivot – Gemini BI

peter.stilgoe — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:56:04 +0000

PowerPivot gives users the power to create compelling self-service BI solutions, facilitates sharing and collaboration on user-generated BI solutions in a Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 environment, and enables IT organizations to increase operational efficiencies through Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2-based management tools.

If you dont have your own test server you can use the virtual lab here:

http://www.powerpivot.com/

If your running Sharepoint 2010 Beta 2 be sure to check out the Powerpivot for Sharepoint solution

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee210682(SQL.105).aspx