Microsoft Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Team Blog

Great resource, thank you for making it available to us. Quick question: Could you please explain why the “Item” activities (*Item and OnItem*) will be deprecated in Beta 2 TR? Will there be new activities that provide similar functionalities? Or, should I create my own custom activities that use the SharePoint Object Model to work with Items?

They were a little buggy but not too complex, so we decided they would be good SDK samples for how to use the channel APIs.:) Plan is to have them ready for RTM.  If you want to code them yourself in the meantime, you can either use the OM, or to register items for events, use SharePoint's IListItemService and the CallExternalMethod and HandleEventSink WF activities.

It would be really helpful to see an example of a custom field control for the publishing feature, as that's hat I'm working on at the moment. I've got it working in presentation mode, but authoring mode is proving more difficult. There's a sample one in the API reference for CMS developers, but when I put it on the page it doesn't appear and none of the code is explained.

Hi,
Thank you for ECMStarter kit. Can you share the knowhow of creating the aspx pages in ECMStarterkit/CollectfeedbackWorkflow/CollectFeedbacksampleAspxPages project.

thanks
-Abraham

Hmm.  I have a question.  I have not found a way in Sharepoint 2007 to initiate a workflow that routes for approval to the person's manager/supervisor.  Is there a way to do this other than hardcoding the person in the workflow approvers list?

Abraham, not sure how much detail you're looking for, but for the aspx pages, we created a serializable class that maps to the data from the form so that we could pass it as a string into the workflow.  The aspx pages have controls that are named, and you can map these controls to variables in your workflow.  There is some general documentation on aspx forms in the WSS SDK which you may find helpful.:)

David, the escalation functionality is not built into SharePoint, but I believe you can use the active directory APIs (or whichever system you're using) in a custom workflow to do this.  We'll try to put out a sample for the next release of the kit that does this.:)

One issue I don't see addressed is how to log custom audit data from the workflow to support reporting etc. Since SPS provides its own Tracking Service implementation, I guess it wouldn't be advisable to plug in the WF SqlTracking service in SPS workflows. But there isn't any guidance on how to use the SPS Tracking Service. I am currently using List.Audit.WriteAuditEvent(), but there may be better ways.

To log custom audit data, you can use Microsoft.SharePoint.WorkflowActions.LogToHistoryListActivity. Pick the proper EventId for Workflow or Task events (e.g. WorkflowStarted, TaskModified, etc.) and bind HistoryDescription and HistoryOutcome to fields in your workflow that you populate in MethodInvoking event handlers from other activities (e.g. CreateTask, CompleteTask, etc.)

Just as the names suggested, LogToHistoryListActivity will log audit information to the History List of the workflow, whatever you put in HistoryDescription and HistoryOutcome will show up under Description and Outcome columns of the History List.

Hao Zhai
KnowledgeLake, Inc.

Any ideas when an update for the ECM starter kit will be released which is compatible with the Beta2 TR release?

Coming soon (sometime next week)... In the meantime, the B2 Kit should for the most part still be compatible, but you'll probably want to recompile the samples.

As a follow up to your June 12th comment concerning the  IListItemService and the CallExternalMethod: I have called InitializeForEvents and am happily running a workflow using the HandleExternalActivity and the OnItemChanged event of an SPListITem. Unfortunately, what I want to do is update the item based on the changes that the user has made. I can't get the changes to commit since calling SPListItem.Update() throws me into event recursion. Sharepoint seems a bit inconsistent in how it handles this situation (in b2tr at least) but usually it results in the workflow erroring out. I've seen several blog entries about this scenario when doing sharepoint event handlers. Apparently there you can call DisableEventFiring() to sneak your update in... Any way to do this in workflow? I didn't see and UnInitializeForEvents on the IListItemService. :)

Do you know when this will be released for RTM versions of SharePoint?  I'm looking to get the VS Templates installed for use against RTM MOSS.

Thanks.

I have installed the ECM on a machine running MOSS 2007 TR2 with visual studio 2005 workflow extensions installed as well as runtime components.  The install of ECM goes smoothly, but the SharePoint Server folder never appears, and therefore I can not select the SharePoint Sequential Workflow Library.  Any idea what I am doing incorrectly, or who I can contact on this?

Thanks

Hi,

I've downloaded the Starter Kit on this blog but when I open up the project in Visual Studio it has the following dll missing: "Microsoft.Office.Policy"

We're using WSS and not MOSS. Could this be the problem?

How can I get this to run?

Thanks

I've downloaded the ECM Starter Kit. But when I open up the "ECMAActivities" project I get a missing reference to "Microsoft.Office.Policy". I think this is because I am missing a prerequisite on the dev server. We have WSS 3 installed and not MOSS. Could this be the reason?

Thanks

Hi guys!

    Nice work on the ECM, I really appreciate your work! I tried the sample signature provider from the doc in your ECM starter kit, however I am unable to find all the libraries need for it to work (TestSignature?? is this available?). I saw that stdole.dll is used, and I made the AxHost2 class to access GetIPictureDispFromPicture() from AxHost, but there are still many classes missing (Win32WindowFromOleWindow, SigningCeremonyForm, COMStream etc). Searching the internet didn't get me relevant results. Can you PLEASE help me?

Hy Eilene

I need to have the SPContext object in my Workflow because i call the methode " Variations.Current.UserAccessibleLabels" which use this object. But i read that the httpcontext is blocked in WF.

Have u a workaround for my problem ? Could I create also my own external class like " IListItemService"

Thx for helping

Matthias

Hi,

Excellent work, I`m working with the example of the signature provider but there are some parts of the example who I can’t find, like the SigningCeremonyForm, in some cases I can replicate some of the expected functionality but in this last form I don’t know what I’m missing.

Well, I appreciate if you can help us to resolve this issue.

The classes y can't find are:

Win32WindowFromOleWindow, SigningCeremonyForm, COMStream , SignatureSetupForm

Thanks

PingBack from http://workfromhomecareer.info/story.php?id=9497

Hi guys!

   Nice work on the ECM, I really appreciate your work! I tried the sample signature provider from the doc in your ECM starter kit, however I am unable to find all the libraries need for it to work (TestSignature?? is this available?). I saw that stdole.dll is used, and I made the AxHost2 class to access GetIPictureDispFromPicture() from AxHost, but there are still many classes missing (Win32WindowFromOleWindow, SigningCeremonyForm, COMStream etc). Can you PLEASE help me?