Code Eater (Wael A. Kabli) : sharepoint

Variation system force checkin, the bottom-up approach

Wael A. Kabli — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 12:56:31 GMT

Variation is one these features that you need to be careful playing with in SharePoint. It requires understanding the mechanism and its internal working parts. Hence, the lack of such level of understanding will result in undesired behavior.

Problem

One of the problems I have faced with my clients is the "Variation System Force Checkin" problem. It all started when a site admin browsed his/her site and found that his changes to the page were lost and and the page is acting weird! He ran to the version history and found out that his/her changes became older version and the system admin checked-in the page forcefully. of course the blame may come to system administrators that they were the ones who forced the checkin.

Explanation

The figure above explains what happens when a page is created in the source site "A" and approved, it will be pushed to the other sites "B" and "C" (other languages).

Now, what happens when you approve a page in the source site with version 1.0. Then, it will be copied to destination sites for translations. during translation the destination page will checked out to the translator. What if the source publish a newer version 2.0 of the same page. Of course, with this automatic behavior a newer version will be pushed into the destination and the current ones will be force to checkin with an automatic comment from sharePoint "Variation System Force checkin" and a newer version is added to the version history.

When Kerberos and SharePoint became friends :)

Wael A. Kabli — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:41:18 GMT

Finally, SharePoint and Kerberos became friends, the technet article: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263449.aspx is exmpaling the whole kerberos story along with sharepoint. This includes having NLB in the farm with multiple service account with multiple server roles.

The only thing that is missing from this article (which i think is out of scope) is the case of having SQL Cluster failover. in that case this article is the best one explaining that: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189585(SQL.90).aspx.

Business Process Automation, a story to tell

Wael A. Kabli — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 09:00:08 GMT

eFroms solution Components

The eForms solution is a result of collaborating the following components all together:

· Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Infrastructure.

· Form Site (Portal): a SharePoint Site that hosts the whole solution and enabling this kind of integration.

· Email: a mail services that will send notifications within the workflows.

· Forms Template: This is the from that contains the target process. This is were you usually take a paper form or a manual process analyze, break-down and make an e-form out of it. In this solution we use Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 in implement eForms or you can use APS.NET forms.

· Workflow: a component that is installed in the SharePoint that will contain the actual business process.

· Workflow Tasks: This is a SharePoint list that contains the tasks created by the workflow. A Task simply replaces a stage of a human task in the process (like an approval, signatures or a configuration).

· Security: to provide non-repudiation, data integrity and origin.

· Workflow History: This is a SharePoint list that stores the workflow logs. This includes cancellations, rejections, approvals and other workflow state transitions.

· Web Services: are set of services that will aid the solution in performing certain tasks such as getting user profiles from Active Directory and get the workflow logs to show a workflow history and maybe getting integrated with other services like Primavera for example.

· Other Lists: some forms depend on few SharePoint List to do some lookups on them.

· Archive: This is where the submitted form get stored which is basically a document or form library.

The flow of a workflow!

The story begins when a user find a link on the portal saying ( click here to fill XYZ form ). The link is actually pointing to the form template (which has the extension xsn) if you are using InfoPath. When he clicks on it, he will be redirected to the InfoPath Forms Server 2007 that is in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server2007 and it will render the form template (xsn) to be displayed on the web browser.

As soon as the form opens, the form had few rules inside it that will communicate with a web service to get the current user credentials from AD.

The user now will fill the form and submit which will actually will save this form in (XML) format in a document library or a form library for archiving.

As soon as this form is submitted, a workflow will run to follow the business process creating tasks to the people who are suppose to process that form (like a manager task to approve that form) and sending emails to the corresponding people to perform their tasks. the workflow will leave its foot prints on the history, so any time the user (or any body) can open the history and look what happened to the process, which task has been completed and what tasks are still pending.

The security model in SharePoint is taking care of who should see what and who can do something. Once the workflow is finished, it will indicate its state such as (Approved or Rejected by Manager or just completed).

Workflow "Failed on Start (retrying)"

Wael A. Kabli — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 05:12:44 GMT

Oh!! its SharePoint again :). One of these small things in this beast which makes you bang your head and pull your hear again and again if you don't get it right. Now lucky you you can search this issue and find the solution.

Debugging in SharePoint is very tricky sometimes because you get all of these levels to run around (GAC + IIS + Deployment Folder under the feature + Feature.xml + Workflow.xml + SharePoint itself + InfoPath the main form template + InfoPath the workflow forms and Web Services) so after this, it is not strange that you would start pulling your hear after a while.

Problem Description:

if you try any workflow (including OOB WF and Custom WF) and when you try to start it, it will show the message Workflow "Failed on Start (retrying)". You may also see that some tasks in the WF are created and even so it fails.

Tip: whenever you are stuck with your custom workflow, try having the OOB, if it doesn't run, its not your problem. (i spent one complete day almost 20H just to discover its not my fault).

One Proof that this thing its not your custom code problem, if you attach the WF process to Visual Studio, it will not catch any exception.

Reasoning:

In WSS/MOSS the workflow engine will report back 'a workflow failed to start' even if the workflow did start.

The reason why is that - the workflow will be sent the 'OnWorkflowActivated' event (start command) and essentially as far as MOSS is concerned - it's starting.

When the workflow for e.g. writes a task item and then waits (handleExternal Event) for the OnTaskChanged event. At this point if it failed - a different error other than 'failed to start' would be reported.

Resolution:

First and importantly check all your correlation tokens. make sure that each task (Creation, Updating and Completing) has its own Token not the workflow token.
Then compare the dll you have with theone in the workflow.xml and the one in the GAC. simply they all should be the same.
Try this on the command prompt: Lodctr "c:\Windows\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v3.0\Windows Workflow Foundation\perfcounters.ini"
And if it doesn't work for you try: Lodctr /R "c:\Windows\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v3.0\Windows Workflow Foundation\perfcounters.ini"

Some Links might Help:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2268844&SiteID=1

Some errors you might see in logs:

The requested Performance Counter is not a custom counter, it has to be initialized as ReadOnly.
Failed on Start (retrying).
Unexpected Load Workflow Class: System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. ---> System.InvalidOperationException: The requested Performance Counter is not a custom counter, it has to be initialized as ReadOnly. at System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter.Initialize() at System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter..ctor(String categoryName, String counterName, String instanceName, Boolean readOnly) at System.Workflow.Runtime.PerformanceCounterManager.CreateCounters(String name) at System.Workflow.Runtime.Hosting.DefaultWorkflowSchedulerService.OnStarted() at System.Workflow.Runtime.Hosting.WorkflowRuntimeService.HandleStarted(Object source, WorkflowRuntimeEventArgs e) at System.EventHandler`1.Invoke(Object sender, TEventArgs e)...
01/11/2008 03:33:24.79* w3wp.exe (0x12B4) 0x0E9C Windows SharePoint Services Workflow Infrastructure
Unexpected    ...     at System.Workflow.Runtime.WorkflowRuntime.StartRuntime()     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWinOeHostServices..ctor(SPSite site, SPWeb web, SPWorkflowManager manager, SPWorkflowEngine engine)     --- End of inner exception stack trace ---     at System.RuntimeMethodHandle._InvokeConstructor(Object[] args, SignatureStruct& signature, IntPtr declaringType)     at System.RuntimeMethodHandle.InvokeConstructor(Object[] args, SignatureStruct signature, RuntimeTypeHandle declaringType)     at System.Reflection.RuntimeConstructorInfo.Invoke(BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object[] parameters, CultureInfo culture)     at System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceImpl(BindingFlags bindingAttr, Binder binder, Object[] args, CultureInfo culture, Object[] activationAttributes)     at System.Ac...
01/11/2008 03:33:24.79*    w3wp.exe (0x12B4)                           0x0E9C    Windows SharePoint Services       Workflow Infrastructure           72fu    Unexpected    ...tivator.CreateInstance(Type type, BindingFlags bindingAttr, Binder binder, Object[] args, CultureInfo culture, Object[] activationAttributes)     at System.Reflection.Assembly.CreateInstance(String typeName, Boolean ignoreCase, BindingFlags bindingAttr, Binder binder, Object[] args, CultureInfo culture, Object[] activationAttributes)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWorkflowManager.LoadPluggableClass(String classname, String assembly, Object[] parameters)
01/11/2008 03:33:24.80     w3wp.exe (0x12B4)                           0x0E9C    Windows SharePoint Services       Workflow Infrastructure

Roadmap to using SharePoint Server 2007

Wael A. Kabli — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 16:54:56 GMT

Finally we have END USERS TRAINING :D finally

Use this roadmap as a starting point to learn about the broad capabilities of Office SharePoint Server 2007 and how to complete common tasks as a contributor to a SharePoint site. You can also find links to site owner tasks, such as setting up permissions and doing some basic customization.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA102486841033.aspx

Attachments in InfoPath Form that is a Task Workflow

Wael A. Kabli — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 11:49:56 GMT

Woho, here is a nice one :), one of the small things that gets you sometimes bang your head for long long time till you find out what's the problem...

Symptoms:

So if you are having a workflow that uses InfoPath forms for tasks and you have attachment controls in it, then you probably faced this error: "The Selected file was not found"!!

Solution or Workaround:

Locate the ASPX page that your workflow form opens up in the _layouts directory on your server.

e.g., %Program Files%Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\
most probably you want WrkTaskIP.aspx --> this page is the one that loads your InfoPath form to be as a task form.

in this aspx page, locate the reference to MasterPageFile. This will look something like

MasterPageFile="~/_layouts/application.master"

Go to the masterPage file you found

In this case go to the application.master in the folder "%Program Files%Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\"

Look for the Form Tag

<form runat="server" onsubmit="return _spFormOnSubmitWrapper();">

Add the attribute enctype="multipart/form-data" to this tag and save.

<form runat="server" onsubmit="return _spFormOnSubmitWrapper();" enctype="multipart/form-data">

iisreset and try your workflow with file attachment again.

Few things to Note:

as you can see, this is a product issue and hopefully it might be fixed in the SP1. But don't get frustrated, that's why we are blogging so you can find such information.

Have fun,,, :)

WSS Coding Best Practices

Wael A. Kabli — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 00:45:00 GMT

WSS Coding Best Practices

(http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb418735.aspx)\

Best Practices: Common Coding Issues When Using the SharePoint Object Model
Best Practices: Using Disposable Windows SharePoint Services Objects
Creating a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Web Part Using Visual Studio 2005 Extensions
Development Tools and Techniques for Working with Code in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (Part 1 of 2)
Development Tools and Techniques for Working with Code in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (Part 2 of 2)
Working with ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0