Announcement: Well there was a big announcement in the SharePoint world that hit me personally – InfoPath is being retired - http://blogs.office.com/2014/01/31/update-on-infopath-and-sharepoint-forms/
Reflection: I had been waiting for public announcement and it was pretty obvious it was coming down when we saw that no new additions or investments (of any importance) we made into InfoPath 2013 and InfoPath Form Services.
Now InfoPath has a special place in my heart and I will say that my love for InfoPath put me where I am today. Really. When I first started at RDA Corp back in 2005 I was just a .NET engineer. My first project I was thrown into an engagement where I had to learn InfoPath 2003, K2.net 2003, BizTalk 2004 and SharePoint 2003 in a week and make them work. That project change my life. I built this solution (with some smart people) which eventually was the finalist for solution of the year at the Microsoft World Wide Partner conference. It had tons of InfoPath components which were hooked on top of a VAX mainframe. I subsequently got hooked into the developer community in ways I had not done before. I starting doing more and more InfoPath and K2 projects and then I got really hooked into SharePoint; the rest is history. I was able to get a job as a SharePoint TSP at Microsoft which has transcended into a career doing Office 365. I can say, it was InfoPath that sparked my love for the Microsoft productivity stack to build business solutions. I started saying “why do I need to build solutions from scratch when I can take all the Microsoft solutions together and build something”.
Over the years on this blog I had wrote extensively on how to do development, best practices and build solutions for InfoPath - http://www.astaticstate.com/search/label/InfoPath. My first blogs in September 2007 were focused on InfoPath. I thought it was a great solution with SharePoint to build business forms and automate them using simple or complex business processes. Reflecting back, I found that InfoPath did a lot of great things for standard to moderately complex forms but when you brush up against the edges (which is what I had to do a lot as a consultant) you found tough things you would be able to resolve with a custom web form. I would always be put into these debates with colleagues on this topic.
Where Do We Go From Here: I believe Microsoft product team is making the right decision. InfoPath had its day, it is a great concept behind it to create forms quickly, extract the XML, shred it and sent it to a database. However today there are so many development frameworks for rapid development and Microsoft is going to continue to create new solutions that will help customers build forms and process automated solutions. Support for InfoPath is not going away anytime soon, they are keeping support through April 2023 (not a typo) and I still say InfoPath is a great solution, just nothing new is being introduced. They noted they plan to create some migration scenarios in Q4 of CY2014, so I will be keeping an eye out for that.
There is a K2 User Group meeting Tuesday, March 9, 11am-1pm central time. In this meeting we will be going over the new release of K2 blackpearl 4.5! If you are a K2 professional or you use K2 at your company I highly recommend that you attend to learn about it and use this as a forum to ask questions. This is a community driven event and is not a sales event.
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Hello Everyone,
Phillip Knight from Merit Energy will be hosting the K2 user group meetings at Merit Energy, located at 13727 Noel Road, 2nd Floor Conference room, Tower 2, Dallas , Texas 75240. Parking information is included in the linked map below. Remote attendance information is included at the bottom of this message.
Link to map: http://www.meritenergy.com/content/MeritMap.pdf. Reminder: Merit Energy is on the 5th floor, but the meeting will be held in the 2nd floor conference room. Once off the elevator, go to the reception area and we will bring you back to the conference room.
Please RSVP to me via email whether you are attending via live meeting or if you will be attending in person (so that we can plan for the number of people to order food for).
Check out the K2 Underground site and our user group at http://www.k2underground.com/groups/greater_texas_user_group/default.aspx. We are posting webexes/live meetings from our meetings at this site.
4/13/2010 11am – 1pm
5/11/2010 11am – 1pm
6/8/2010 11am – 1pm
7/13/2010 11am – 1pm
8/10/2010 11am – 1pm
Meeting Agenda:
11-11:15 Networking/Refreshments
11:15-11:30 Announcements/Intros of New people
11:30-11:45 Tips & Tricks
11:45-12:45 Technical Presentation
12:45-1:00 Meeting Wrapup
The Announcements section of the meeting will include any information regarding K2 upcoming events and user group events as well as brief introductions of our presenter and refreshment provider.
The Tips & Tricks Presentation is when we as members can pose questions to each other on projects that we are working on and having difficulty with. It is also a time when if we have learned something that we feel will be helpful to others, we can share it with the group. Bring yours to share/ask.
Meeting Presentation and Sponsoring Company:
We thank K2 for providing a presenter for our March meeting to show K2 BlackPearl release 4.5's new features.
The K2 platform is for delivering process-driven applications that improve business efficiency. Visual tools make it easy for anyone to assemble reusable objects into applications that use workflow and line-of-business information.
K2-based solutions are deployed by a growing number of the global Fortune 100. K2 is a division of SourceCode Technology Holdings, Inc. based in Redmond, Washington, and has offices all over the world
For more information, contact Joe Bocardo at joeb@k2.com.
Meeting Presenter:
Our meeting presenter information will be available in the next meeting announcement.
For Virtual Attendees:
Note: please keep your phone on mute until you are ready to speak.
Audio Information
Telephone conferencing
Choose one of the following:
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Troubleshooting
Unable to join the meeting? Follow these steps:
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If you would like to provide refreshments at an upcoming meeting or present at an upcoming meeting, please contact me.
Let me know if you have any questions prior to the meeting.
The next meeting announcement will be sent out next Tuesday.
Thanks,
Have a great day!
Introduction
I recently had the task to integrate some enterprise WCF services with a K2 blackpearl process for a company. If you need an introduction on WCF, please read this blog I wrote on how to write a WCF service.
There was not much stuff on the K2 Underground so I figured I write a short blog on how to go it. Thank you to Bob Maggio at K2 for giving some pointers.
There are really two ways you can do this.
Server Side Code Event
To all a WCF endpoint from a server side code event is pretty simple but there are a few things you should know. First, you may be used to right clicking on references in class library project and selecting the "Add Service Reference". What this does use the Svcutil tool to generate a client service class for you to call. That equivalent is not available in a K2 blackpearl project. You can try to add a reference by going to the K2 blackpearl process properties and then select references. In there you have the ability to add a "web reference" but that is for a Web Service. Even if the WCF service is deployed in IIS, you cannot use that methodology as it will give you errors. Just trying doing in a command line application outside of K2 and you will see what I mean.
The only way to do call the WCF service in clean manner is to create a class library project and call to it from your server side code event. The steps are:
Notes
Dynamic WCF SmartObject Service
In my solution I elected to not use this even though it is a pretty good approach. Why? We really were not using SmartObjects as part of the overall architecture. First, I really did not want to have to pass through SmartObject layer just to do WCF call. Second, SmartObjects are great for doing visual development inside your K2 blackpearl processes. However in this solution we were already doing lots of server side code events so writing code into the process was not big deal and really quick to do anyways.
If we had decided to use the Dynamic WCF SmartObject Service I really liked to deployment better than the first option we went over. The configuration of the WCF service endpoints would have been in the SmartObject service on each K2 Server rather than having to modify the K2 Service config file and restarting the K2 server when there is a change.
Considerations
Only consideration I always mention is that K2 processes version controlled. That means your WCF services MUST be version controlled. What can happen is:
So if you were to:
There will be a high chance that you will run into this issue. You need to account for this because making changes to WCF services. This is really nothing new; you will run into this issue when calling external databases or web services. If you are practicing good SOA methodologies you will be able to handle service versioning.
A couple months ago I was asked some very direct questions about the viability of K2 and other such tools with .NET 4.0 and Dublin. I personally have just not have had lots of time to do go off and research this. However I attended a quick one hour virtual session put on by Microsoft for WF in .NET 4.0.
The big thing I found out is that the State Machine workflow will not available in the initial release of .NET 4.0. That was a big surprise to me. All you will have is Sequential and Flow Chart workflows. The presenter said that you can achieve something similar to a State Machine workflow by doing a Flow Chart workflow. This would lead me to believe that many of the workflow challenges we had with WF in MOSS 2007 have not been resolved.
They talked a little about Workflow Services and I found out that you cannot do as much with Workflow Services than what you can do with WF. I did not get any details on what those specifics were.
A lot of the discussion was about how ISV can use WF to augment their frameworks and even provide the ability to allow customizations into their products using visual tools. This is what I have been preaching for a while now. You cannot adopt WF as the business process automation platform for a company. It does not come anywhere close. It is a framework to build business process automation frameworks.
I have had conversations think where companies believe that since they have SharePoint to host their WF workflows and they believe that is all they need. In the long run your costs will be significantly hirer to maintain, extend upon and manage. I have a personal thing with WF in SharePoint because I do not like the fact that the workflows can only be tied to a piece of content. If a company wanted to do finance or accounting process automation (that would span across enterprise systems) the workflow instance would have to be tied to a SharePoint list item which is not even actor in the process itself. So ask, why do we need this SharePoint list item, it serves no real purpose in the process. Plus if someone deletes the item or the associated task, the process will just end. There is no reporting, and the list goes on.
The point is that WF in MOSS should be used to just manage content in SharePoint. It is not a good platform for human workflow – you really need to look at other tools if you need human workflow. Plus it really does not look like Microsoft is chasing after companies like K2 and Nintex and they should have a healthy future.
K2 has released an important patch build based on their latest build which supports Windows Server 2008 and SQL 2008. This is build 483. In this case, build 483 can be installed on top of either a 4.8210.2.X or 4.8210.3.X.
It is important you get this installed and it should be the last one of these for a little. This was put out because these there were some immediate issued discovered.
Here is the upgrade path.
The following are the resolved issues that have been rolled into this build.
Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 Supported
K2 blackpearl 4.8210.3.0 has now been released. The importance of this release is that Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 is now officially supported!!!
Here is a link to see other new features and functionality of this release - http://kb.k2workflow.com/ArticleAttach/K2%20blackpearl%200807%20Feature%20and%20Functionality%20Changes.pdf.
Specifically some notice changes for 4.8210.3.0 are:
Visual Studio 2008 is not supported just yet. I know it had been targeted for this release however it should be out soon.
There are two installers for this release. Basically there is:
Both 4.8210.3.0 and 4.8210.2.450 are really the same from a bit perspective. You can only install 4.8210.3.0 on a machine if no K2 is installed or if the machine has K2 blackpearl version prior to 4.8210.2.X.
Both 4.8210.3.0 and 4.8210.2.450 support running on SQL Server 2008.
This past week I upgraded a client to 4.8210.2.450 and it went pretty smooth. They also had MOSS on Server 2008 in the farm but their SharePoint and SQL machines were on Server 2003. We were able to install of their Server 2003 machines to 4.8210.2.450 and then installed 4.8210.3.0 on the MOSS machine which had Sever 2008. We did not get time to fully test it but a configuration like that should work.
Release Issues
IMPORTANT - build 483 was released
Introduction to K2 Roles
K2 Roles are a way to create re-usable groups of users that can be used across processes. For instance you could create a K2 Role called Accounting Managers and that K2 Role can be used in a K2 Destination Rule. They are similar to an AD Group or a SharePoint Group but a little different. One added advantage of using K2 Roles will be kept in sync with tasks created for users to action. So what does that mean? Basically when you do not use a K2 Role and assign a specific user account to a destination rule that account will tied to the slot that is created at run time. Once the slot is created for that destination user it cannot be changed unless the user or administrator delegates the task. However if the you use a K2 Role, users that are in of the Accounting Managers K2 Role, will have immediate access to the worklist item slot (based on the refresh interval). So this is good thing to use if you anticipate that users who can potentially be assigned a task may change often.
I highly recommend reading this whitepaper - http://k2underground.com/files/folders/technical_product_documents/entry20948.aspx. It explains what is a K2 Role in detail.
Here are some of my notes on K2 Roles:
Getting User who Actioned
When using K2 Roles I have run into situations that have tripped me up a couple times. Let's say I have a client side event (InfoPath) and I want to perform custom code after the InfoPath event. Specifically, I need to know who was the user who actioned the event. To do this you need to execute the following code:
public static string GetActionUser(ActivityInstance activityInstance) {
//Loop over the activity slots to see who was the user who
//actioned the worklist item.
foreach (Slot slot in K2.ActivityInstanceDestionation.ActivityInstance.WorklistSlots) {
if (slot.Status == ActInstSlotStatus.Completed) {
return slot.User.Name;
}
}
return "";
}
What this does is loop over the slots, checks which slot was completed and by whom. You cannot go directly to the ActivityInstanceDestionation because the K2 Role was assigned as the destination user. However slots will be created dynamically for each user in the K2 Role based on the refresh interval.
Email All users in K2 Role
In many situations, I have needed to email all of the users in a K2 Role. One solution to do this without having to write any custom code would be to go to the advanced destination rules of an activity where an Email Event has been added. Select Plan per Destination All at Once. Then select Resolve All Roles to users. Then in the Email Event select send the email to the Destination User checkbox. I would only recommend doing this in an Email Event that is in its own Activity. Do not do this in the same activity where you have a client side event, like an InfoPath event. What this will do is not allow the K2 Role to be dynamic refreshed defeating the purpose of all the stuff we just talked about.
Another approach would be to use the following code to build a string of email addresses that are in the K2 Role. Then set the email string into an activity level field. Then use activity level field in the Email Event wizard. You can see in the code I have an AD SmartObject with a method called GetDetails that I use to get the user's email address.
using SourceCode.Security.UserRoleManager.Management;
using SourceCode.SmartObjects.Client;
public static string GetEmailsInRole(string conn, string roleName){
string emailAddress = "";
conn = conn.Replace(" ", "");
UserRoleManager roleManager = null;
SmartObjectClientServer server = null;
try {
//Create Manager
roleManager = new UserRoleManager();
roleManager.CreateConnection();
roleManager.Connection.Open(conn);
//Get Role
Role role = roleManager.GetRole(roleName);
//SmartObject server reference
server = new SmartObjectClientServer();
server.CreateConnection();
server.Connection.Open(conn);
//Get Person Definition
SmartObject person = server.GetSmartObject("Person");
person.MethodToExecute = "GetDetails";
foreach (RoleItem item in role.Include) {
//Now get the email from the smartobject
person.Properties["ADID"].Value = item.Name.Replace("K2:", "");
server.ExecuteScalar(person);
emailAddress += person.Properties["Email"].Value +";";
}
//remove last semi-colon
emailAddress = emailAddress.Substring(0, emailAddress.Length - 1);
}
catch (Exception ex) {
}
Finally {
if (roleManager.Connection != null) {
roleManager.Connection.Close();
}
if (server.Connection != null) {
server.Connection.Close();
}
}
return emailAddress;
}
}
There have been some recent questions to me about K2 process deployment dependencies. I wrote the chapter in the book which focused really on how to deploy a K2 process or SmartObject from one environment to another. It discussed the relationship between environments and the StringTable, MSBuild and deployment dependencies you need to consider. However there are some elements to a K2 process deployment that you still must consider which can be taken for granted.
Remember that most everything you configure in the K2 Workspace must be re-configured in your destination environment. Let me clarify this:
You still also need to consider all other applications and components that must be deployed before you deploy your K2 process. For instance:
The list can go on. So when doing a deployment, you really need to map out all dependencies of the entire solution and ensure that you deploy everything in the right order.
I recently ran into an issue with creating a site template that where I wanted to use the Publishing Feature. My end goal was to create a real site definition but I first wanted to try to create template directly in SharePoint. I quickly found out that if you have the "Office SharePoint Server Publishing" Feature turned, on the "Save site as template" will not be available. The most common solution that many suggested was to simply turn off the Publishing Feature, create the site template and then manually turn on the Pushing Feature.
However this would not work well because I am building an automated site provisioning processes using K2 blackpearl. Basically in this K2 blackpearl process I use an InfoPath form, get approval on the site request, and then dynamically generate the site with custom SharePoint groups. We are trying to drive SharePoint Governance with K2 blackpearl which will ensure that the site topology is organized well, SharePoint groups and users are managed in a repeatable process and system administrators can be less involved with creating sites. As well, I want to use customized site templates to ensure that all sites are presented in the same manner instead of being a hodge-podge mess of content. We are even going as far as adding standardized content types into the site templates with K2 workflows mapped to the content types to ensure that publication of the content always goes through a standard process.
Back to the original problem at hand – knowing that I am creating an automated process to site provisioning I cannot expect users to go in and manually turn on the Publishing Feature on the site. The options I came up with were the following:
Option 1 – Did not work as intended. I wanted to use the STS template. I followed best practices, created my own site template and then added <Feature FeatureId="94C94CA6-B32F-4da9-A9E3-1F3D343D7ECB" /> to the <WebFeatures> element in the onet.xml file. I also modified the <Modules> to have several custom web parts displayed on the default.aspx. Doing this made sure that the Publishing Feature was turned on when the site was provisioned by SharePoint. However the Publishing Feature would completely wipe out my home page (default.aspx) and all the changes I made to default.aspx in the onet.xml file were gone!!!
Now, if a manually create my site template and then manually turn on the Publishing Feature the default.aspx will not get wiped out. Since the Publishing Feature is being turned during the actual site creation process within SharePoint, SharePoint is allowing the Publishing Feature to take over the homepage. So this would not work for me.
Option 2 – My next solution was to create the following Site Stapling Feature:
<Feature Id="13F62CC1-22DE-4719-AA44-1BCACD9E2D50"
Title="ML Demo KB Site Staple"
Description="Associates publishing and content type binding to Site Template."
Version="1.0.0.0"
Scope="Site"
Hidden="FALSE"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
<ElementManifests>
<ElementManifest Location="SiteStaple.xml" />
</ElementManifests>
</Feature>
<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
<!-- Web Publishing -->
<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="94C94CA6-B32F-4da9-A9E3-1F3D343D7ECB" TemplateName="KB#0" />
<!-- KB Content Type Binding -->
<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="AD644A91-BA8B-45ff-89FD-F96BCBEDC3BD" TemplateName="KB#0" />
</Elements>
As you can see the FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation is used to turn the custom features I need, including the Publishing Feature. The result was the exact same as Option 1. Again because the Publishing Feature is being activated during SharePoint's site provisioning process the default.aspx page is being overridden.
Option 3 – My ultimate solution was to add some code into my K2 blackpearl process to activate the Feature. I was pretty happy to say to that point I had no code yet in my process – however that is just not possible some days but that is why K2 blackpearl is so great. I basically added the following lines of code into my site provisioning process and I was able to completely replicate what I was able to do manually as a user within SharePoint.
The K2 Process
Code from "Activate Site Features"
//Activate the Features...
using (SPSite site = new SPSite(K2.StringTable["SharePoint Site Collection URL"]))
{
string webURL = K2.StringTable["KB Collaboration Site Logical Path"] + "/KB" +
K2.ProcessInstance.DataFields["New KB Number"].Value;
using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb(webURL))
{
SPFeatureCollection features = web.Features;
features.Add(new Guid(K2.StringTable["Publishing Feature"]), true);
features.Add(new Guid(K2.StringTable["Web Publishing Feature"]), true);
features.Add(new Guid(K2.StringTable["KB Content Type Binding Feature"]), true);
}
}
I was just given some links to a really great resource for K2 Developers. Chris Geier at K2 has pulled this together and is managing it; this is great!
In it are good blog postings, K2 whitepapers, KB articles, MSDN articles, videos, etc. I still recommend getting the K2 blackpearl Professional book and use this information to supplement your learning of the K2 blackpearl Platform.
Recently I went through another Kerberos configuration and I promised myself after going it I would write something about it. I have had to do Kerberos configurations several times and it seems that every time I do it something changes. Luckily it is not just me who has this experience so I do not feel too bad.
I am not a security expert nor am I a network engineer. There are tons of blogs and articles that explain Kerberos however I am going to try to make this simple. When installing K2 or MOSS you may need to configure Kerberos to get around authentication issues associated an account's credentials being passed between applications that reside on different physical servers. For example:
Kerberos is required to resolve the issue commonly referred to as the "double hop" issue. If you ever see errors like "NT AUTHORITY/ANONYMOUS LOGON" or "401 - Access Denied" you are experiencing an issue that can be resolved by configuring Kerberos authentication. When receiving an error like this, what is happening is Application A does not have permission to delegate user credentials to Application B which resides on Server B. Because there is no permission to delegate permissions from one machine to another, Application B subsequently defaults to using an anonymous login which is not sufficient for most applications.
To resolve this issue a level of trust needs to be created such that service accounts are trusted to pass a user's credentials from one machine to another.
In the case of K2, Kerberos authentication is always required once the K2 topology becomes dispersed across multiple servers. A common scenario is when SharePoint and K2 are not installed on the same physical servers.
Setting up Kerberos authentication should not be confused with Single Sign-On (SSO). SSO is used for storage of multiple username and passwords and then allowing the user to only log in once. Since all of the credential information is stored centrally then a broker will use those stored credentials to log the user into another application without having them to type in a different username and password. This is typically used so that the user does not have to remember multiple username and passwords to access systems.
In following sections I will discuss setting up Kerberos for K2 blackpearl. In part two of this series I will discuss Kerberos considerations for SharePoint. Setting up Kerberos authentication in a SharePoint environment is considered to be a best practice and provides better security than NTLM. It is also common to have to configure Kerberos with SharePoint when working with SQL Reporting services (SSRS).
2 - K2 and Kerberos
As mentioned before, you will need to set up Kerberos authentication for K2 when it is distributed across many servers. The major components are that can be distributed are:
The K2 Getting Starting documentation is really good. A good portion of the following documentation comes from it however I have re-organized it a little and identified a few gaps.
2.1 - K2 and SQL Server
It is possible to have K2 blackpearl and SQL Server sitting on different machines and not require Kerberos authentication. The K2 Service account needs to have access to the access to SQL Server to access the various K2 databases; that is it.
2.2 - K2 Host Server
In the K2 Getting Started instructions, it states that you will need to run the following commands:
You will need to run these commands regardless of how you plan to distribute your K2 environment.
To verify the spn commands you ran:
This command states which machines the K2 Services Account can delegate from. It is good to run this periodically so you do not get lost while doing this.
The following picture shows the following Kerberos delegations that could be required based on the distribution of the K2 environment. The numbers correspond to sections below.
2.3 - K2 and SharePoint
A common scenario is that K2 Host Server and the SharePoint server will not reside on the same machine. If that is the case the following commands need to executed.
Notes:
Now that the spn has been set up for the SharePoint WFE we need to:
In the delegation tab, what we basically did was say that the SharePoint Service Account is allowed to delegate credentials to the K2 Service Account only. Hopefully that can simplifies your understanding of what is going on.
You may be wondering why you had to do all of this. If you do not, K2 commands that are generated from SharePoint will not be trusted by the K2 Host Server. For instance the K2 task list web part, a web service call from web enabled InfoPath, etc. will not be trusted by the K2 Host Server. If you were to run the K2 Service from command line and not do any of the configurations above you would see a bunch of "NT AUTHORITY/ANONYMOUS LOGON" errors.
Debugging Note - There can be no duplicate SPN entries created. Uniqueness is defined by the combination of service and machine name. Examples of a service to this point are K2Server, K2HostServer and HTTP. A common mistake is to set up SPNs for the same service and machine with multiple service accounts. You will not receive an error when using the setspn command however Kerberos will not work if this is done. Some tools are discussed later that will help uncover these sort of issues.
Unusual Error – I had a painful experienced recently when configuring a K2 environment. We had followed all of the instructions correctly but we were still getting "NT AUTHORITY/ANONYMOUS LOGON" errors when watching the K2 Host Server via command line. Our solution was to select the "Use any authentication protocol" option instead of the "User Kerberos only" option in the Delegation tab. We lost days trying to figure this issue; unknowingly thinking that the only valid option was to select "User Kerberos only".
When doing some research on this option I found that the "Use any authentication protocol" option, meant that "the account can use the protocol transition extension to obtain a service ticket enables it to obtain service tickets to a pre-configured subset of kerberized services". I needed some more clarification and a colleague of mine (Jason Montgomery) sent me the following, "For Kerberos to function, a user's computer needs to be able to contact the Key Distribution Center (KDC) directly in order to get a Ticket to pass along to the Web Site they would like to authenticate with. If the user is outside the network and doesn't have network access to the KDC (Domain Controller), Protocol Transition allows the user to authenticate using any windows authentication protocol (Client Certificates, Forms Auth, Token, proprietary, etc). Once the user has authenticated, the Protocol Transition Extension allows the Service to retrieve a Ticket from the KDC on behalf of a user to itself. From this point on, the Service will be to properly pass the users ticket along to other tiers where required allowing the system to function as designed." He further explained "In your case having Protocol Transition setup didn't work because the Service needs first authenticate the user then call LsaLogonUser or use WindowsIdentity to obtain the token using the S4USelf extension (i suspect they are using the normal Kerberos proxy delegation or S4UProxy extension). If the K2 Service doesn't use the S4USelf extension during Auth then configuring K2 to use Protocol Transition will always fail". That was much lower that I had expected to go, however my tip is sometimes if Kerberos is still not working, try changing the Kerberos delegation to use the "Use any authentication protocol" option.
2.4 - K2 and K2 Workspace
When K2 and the K2 Workspace are placed on different servers, Kerberos authentication will need to be configured between the K2 Workspace and the K2 Host Server. In many cases I personally tend to keep the K2 Workspaces on the same machine as the K2 Host Server. The reason being is that the K2 Workspace is typically only opened up to a few power users and administrators. It is full of a ton of administrative functionality and I typically equate it to Central Administration for SharePoint.
Before continuing note that many occasions I have seen the same account used for both the K2 Service and the K2 Workspace Service. It is still required that you set up an SPN because delegation is going across physical servers and that is why Kerberos is required.
We have now given the K2 Workspace Service Account permission to pass user credentials to K2 Service Account. Otherwise you will get a bunch of 401 errors in the K2 Workspace web site.
2.4.1 K2 Workspace IIS Metabase
Next you need to update the IIS Metabase. The changes will be made to IIS in order to allow Kerberos authentication for the K2 Workspace web site.
2.5 – SharePoint and K2 Workspace
If SharePoint and the K2 Workspace are not on the same server, Kerberos authentication needs to be set up such that the SharePoint Service Account and delegate to the RuntimeServices web services that are hosted within the K2 workspace.
2.6 - K2 and SSRS
Another common scenario is that SSRS will already be installed somewhere. The following configurations are required.
Note - This can be avoided by installing SSRS on the machine where the K2 Host Server resides. This is possible because SSRS is a web site can be installed anywhere. Be warned, that if you do this, you will need to pay another SQL Server License because Microsoft deems this as another install of SQL Server.
2.6.1 SSRS to K2
The Reporting Services Service Account is the account which the SSRS web site runs under in the IIS Application Pool. This is needed to ensure that the account that being used to access a report is verified against the K2 Host server. For instance if K2 SmartObject Data Provider is used in a SSRS report, the account needs pass the K2 Host Server.
Complete the following:
2.6.2 K2 to SSRS
Another thing you will need to do is to allow the K2 Host Server service account to schedule SSRS reports. Now the K2 Host Server needs to be able to delegate to the SSRS Service Account. You will not need to run any spn commands because you have then all done at this point. You need to do the following:
2.6.3 - K2 Workspace to SSRS
To add one more wrinkle to this, if you have the K2 Workspace and SSRS sitting on different servers, you need to allow the K2 Workspace to delegate use credentials to SSRS. This is because SSRS reports are embedded directly into the K2 Workspace.
2.6.4 SSRS IIS Metabase
Next you need to update the IIS Metabase. The changes will be made to IIS in order to allow Kerberos authentication for the SSRS web site.
5 - Still Having Issues - Kerberos Configuration Tool
Download this tool; this helped me out tremendously after going through the Kerberos configuration and validating if I had set up everything correctly. It took a little bit to get the hang but it works great.
You only need to install it on one machine in the farm. What you can do is modify the parameters and it will tell you if there are any issues with Kerberos authentication between machines.
Some other tools that were recommended to me which I have not used are ldifde.exe and spnquery.vbs.
6 - Recommendations
My recommendation is place the K2 Host Server, K2 Workspace and SSRS on the same machine. SharePoint should be installed on its own dedicated environment. The SSRS install is only created to support K2 SSRS reports. This will only require you to complete sections 2.2, 2.3 and 2.5.
7 - References
8 - Credits
I also had some reviewers which helped me out.
1.0 Creating the Utility
1.1 Introduction
This blog will hopefully help when trying to get attachments out of InfoPath forms and into SharePoint document libraries. If you are doing standard MOSS and InfoPath development, you are going to want to eventually get the attachments out of the InfoPath form. For instance when you search for attached documents, if they are still in the InfoPath form, search cannot find them because they are a binary string inside the InfoPath instance.
For K2 developers many of you know of the storage ramifications if the InfoPath form stores the attachment binary. I wrote a blog back in the K2.net 2003 days where I wrote a custom web service that would using the K2 API to save the attachment off in into SharePoint 2003. Some others came up with other solutions like using K2 SmartObjects, or extracting the binary out of the XML before the process instance starts. I just figured that there must be a better way of doing this in a generic way.
1.2 Solution
The solution is to create a custom SharePoint web service that runs under the context of SharePoint. Why did I decide to ultimately use a custom SharePoint service to implement this solution?
I will provide a detailed solution on how to get InfoPath attachments out of the forms and into SharePoint document libraries. This solution is geared towards anyone doing MOSS and InfoPath development. The solution is straight forward:
2.0 Upload Utilities
Before going off and creating this web service, let's create the utilities that will upload the files.
The ultimate user experience is that they will not ever know that they are uploading the document to a SharePoint library and it is completely transparent.
I will create a C# class library called WSSDistillery.Utilities. The reason why I am doing this is because all of these methods can be completely reusable in a list event handler, in a WF workflow, web part, etc. All the custom service is going to do is wrap the method calls.
In this project add references to Microsoft.SharePoint and System.Web.
2.1 Upload Attachments
The trick associated to getting an attachment out of an InfoPath form is removing the header. What happens is when an attachment is pulled into an InfoPath form; InfoPath will add a header into the binary of the attachment that captures information like the name and size of the file. We need to rip that out and only send the binary of the attachment itself into a document library. Plus we want to make sure the name of the file set into SharePoint too.
The following class will show you how to do it. Now in my old blog I show how to do it. I wanted to rewrite it plus I wanted to do it in a better way. I found this blog which made it so much simpler. I have repurposed that code here.
public class InfoPathForm
{
/// <summary>
/// Uploads an InfoPath attachment to a list and folders. Method
/// only supports saving items up to two folders deep.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="siteURL"></param>
/// <param name="webUrl"></param>
/// <param name="docLibName"></param>
/// <param name="parentFolderName">Pass NULL if there is no folder.</param>
/// <param name="subFolderName">Pass NULL if there is no sub folder.</param>
/// <param name="infopathAttachment"></param>
/// <param name="overwrite"></param>
public static void UploadAttachmentFile(string siteURL, string webUrl,
string docLibName, string parentFolderName, string subFolderName,
byte[] infopathAttachment, bool overwrite)
{
try
{
MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream(infopathAttachment);
BinaryReader reader = new BinaryReader(stream);
//Read header
reader.ReadBytes(16); // Skip the header data.
int fileSize = (int)reader.ReadUInt32();
int attachmentNameLength = (int)reader.ReadUInt32() * 2;
byte[] fileNameBytes = reader.ReadBytes(attachmentNameLength);
//Get the attachment name
Encoding enc = Encoding.Unicode;
string attachmentName = enc.GetString(fileNameBytes, 0, attachmentNameLength - 2);
//Get the real attachment without InfoPath header
byte[] attachment = reader.ReadBytes(fileSize);
using (SPSite site = new SPSite(siteURL))
{
using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb(webUrl))
{
SPList list = web.Lists[docLibName];
if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(parentFolderName))
{
//Save document directly into list.
list.RootFolder.Files.Add(attachmentName, attachment, overwrite);
}
else
{
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(subFolderName))
{
//Save document in folder in root of list.
list.RootFolder.SubFolders[parentFolderName].Files.Add(
attachmentName, attachment, overwrite);
}
else
{
//Save document in a sub folder.
list.RootFolder.SubFolders[parentFolderName].SubFolders[subFolderName].Files.Add(
attachmentName, attachment, overwrite);
}
}
}
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
throw new Exception("Error saving attachment >> " + ex.Message.ToString());
}
}
}
2.2 Folder Methods
The following are the folder methods that I will use to create a folder in the root of a SPList. I also have a method for creating a sub folder. I really did not try to make this handle creating folders deeper than two levels. I also know it possible to write something a little more generic however I just want to expose allowing external callers to create a parent and a sub directory only.
public class Folder
{
/// <summary>
/// Create a folder in the root of a list.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="siteURL"></param>
/// <param name="webUrl"></param>
/// <param name="docLibName"></param>
/// <param name="folderName"></param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static SPListItem CreateTopFolder(string siteURL, string webUrl,
string docLibName, string folderName)
{
SPList list = GetList(siteURL, webUrl, docLibName);
return CreateFolder(list,
folderName,
list.RootFolder.ServerRelativeUrl,
null);
}
/// <summary>
/// Creates a sub folder using a reference to a parent folder.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="siteURL"></param>
/// <param name="webUrl"></param>
/// <param name="docLibName"></param>
/// <param name="parentFolderName"></param>
/// <param name="subFolderName"></param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static SPListItem CreateSubFolder(string siteURL, string webUrl,
string docLibName, string parentFolderName, string subFolderName)
{
SPList list = GetList(siteURL, webUrl, docLibName);
return CreateFolder(list,
subFolderName,
list.RootFolder.ServerRelativeUrl + "/" + parentFolderName,
parentFolderName);
}
//Get the list
private static SPList GetList(string siteURL, string webUrl,
string docLibName)
{
using (SPSite site = new SPSite(siteURL))
{
using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb(webUrl))
{
return web.Lists[docLibName];
}
}
}
/// <summary>
/// Creates a folder.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="list"></param>
/// <param name="folderName"></param>
/// <param name="folderUrl"></param>
/// <param name="parentFolder"></param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static SPListItem CreateFolder(SPList list, string folderName,
string folderUrl, string parentFolder)
{
SPListItem folder = null;
foreach (SPListItem f in list.Folders)
{
if (f.Name == folderName)
{
folder = f;
break;
}
}
if (folder == null)
{
folder = list.Items.Add(folderUrl,
SPFileSystemObjectType.Folder, parentFolder);
if (folder != null)
{
folder["Name"] = folderName;
folder["Title"] = folderName;
folder.Update();
}
}
return folder;
}
}
2.3 Get Files
This method will return all of the files for a specified SPList or folder. Right now it is only geared towards going two layers deep. I could write something that is recursive where I can say get all files from a specified folder at a specific level however right now that is not needed.
public class Items
{
/// <summary>
/// Method will return all of the files in a specified folder. It is
/// limited from only getting two levels deep.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="siteURL"></param>
/// <param name="webUrl"></param>
/// <param name="docLibName"></param>
/// <param name="parentFolderName">optional</param>
/// <param name="subFolderName">optional</param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static SPListItemCollection GetItems(string siteURL, string webUrl,
string docLibName, string parentFolderName, string subFolderName)
{
try
{
SPListItemCollection items = null;
using (SPSite site = new SPSite(siteURL))
{
using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb(webUrl))
{
SPList list = web.Lists[docLibName];
SPFolder folder = null;
if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(parentFolderName))
{
//Get from root
folder = list.RootFolder;
}
else
{
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(subFolderName))
{
//Get from first level of folders
folder = GetFolder(list.RootFolder.SubFolders, parentFolderName);
}
else
{
//Get from second level of folders
folder = GetFolder(list.RootFolder.SubFolders[parentFolderName].SubFolders,
subFolderName);
}
}
//Get the items
if (folder != null)
{
SPQuery query = new SPQuery();
query.Folder = folder;
items = web.Lists[docLibName].GetItems(query);
}
return items;
}
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
throw new Exception("Error creating list of items >> " + ex.Message.ToString());
}
}
private static SPFolder GetFolder(SPFolderCollection folders, string folderName)
{
foreach (SPFolder folder in folders)
{
if (folder.Name == folderName)
{
return folder;
}
}
return null;
}
}
3.0 Creating the Custom SharePoint Web Service
The next step is to create the custom SharePoint web service. There is a MSDN Article and SDK article but in this article I have streamlined it. Here is another blog I found but it has some issues associated to the deployment.
3.1 Create a web service project
Create a web service project called WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPath with a web service called InfoPathAttachment.asmx.
3.2 Create Web Methods
I then added a reference to the WSSDistillery.Utilities project I created in the previous section. You will need to add reference to Microsoft.SharePoint. All my web service does is wrap and expose the methods from my utility class.
public class InfoPathAttachment : System.Web.Services.WebService
{
[WebMethod]
public void UploadInfoPathAttachment(string siteURL, string webUrl,
string docLibName, string parentFolderName, string subFolderName,
byte[] attachment, bool overwrite)
{
InfoPathForm.UploadAttachmentFile(siteURL, webUrl, docLibName,
parentFolderName, subFolderName, attachment, overwrite);
}
[WebMethod]
public void CreateFolder(string siteURL, string webUrl,
string docLibName, string folderName)
{
Folder.CreateTopFolder(siteURL, webUrl, docLibName, folderName);
}
[WebMethod]
public void CreateSubFolder(string siteURL, string webUrl,
string docLibName, string parentFolderName, string subFolderName)
{
Folder.CreateSubFolder(siteURL, webUrl, docLibName, parentFolderName, subFolderName);
}
[WebMethod]
public XmlDocument GetAttachments(string siteURL, string webUrl,
string docLibName, string parentFolderName, string subFolderName)
{
StringBuilder xml = new StringBuilder();
xml.Append("<items>");
SPListItemCollection items = WSSDistillery.Utilities.Items.GetItems(
siteURL, webUrl, docLibName, parentFolderName, subFolderName);
foreach (SPListItem item in items)
{
//Do not include folders items
if (item.Folder == null)
{
xml.AppendFormat("<item><name>{0}</name><url>{1}</url></item>",
item.Name, HttpUtility.UrlPathEncode(item.Web.Url + "/" + item.Url));
}
}
xml.Append("</items>");
//InfoPath can consume an XML Document easily
XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
xmlDoc.LoadXml(xml.ToString());
return xmlDoc;
}
}
3.2.1 Remove Code Behind Reference
After creating the service, right click InfoPathAttachment.asmx, click on View Mark Up and remove the code behind attribute leaving just.
<%@ WebService Language="C#" Class="WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPath.InfoPathAttachment" %>
3.3 Create the Discovery and WSDL files
Next we need create the discovery and WSDL files. Now these steps are a little strange and may not make complete sense at first. Basically we have to make the service discoverable inside of SharePoint.
First what I did was create a virtual directory in IIS that pointed to my web service project. So my project is located at C: \WSSDistillery\Utilities\WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPathAttachment and I point the virtual directory to use those files. The name of virtual directory is TestInfoPathAttachment. Then I opened the .NET command line window and ran the following command.
disco http://localhost/TestInfoPathAttachment/InfoPathAttachment.asmx
Second, this will generate two files (InfoPathAttachment.wsdl and InfoPathAttachment.disco) that are located at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin. Go get those files, copy them into your web service project directory and add them into your Visual Studio project by adding existing items. Rename the files to be the following:
Third, in both files do the following. Remove the XML tag line:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
And replace it with this:
<%@ Page Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.UI.Page" %>
<%@ Assembly Name="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint" %>
<% Response.ContentType = "text/xml"; %>
Be really careful when doing this because Visual Studio will sometimes try to add in double quote marks. If that happens, get rid of them because InfoPath will break when making the web service call. Someone actually mentioned this in the MSDN Article and I would have been scratching my head of weeks if that was not there.
Fourth, go into the disco file replace the contractRef and both soap nodes with the following. Pay special attention to where you replace in the name of the service. I have bolded the things you must change based on the name of the web service – in this case InfoPathAttachment.
<contractRef ref=<% SPHttpUtility.AddQuote(SPHttpUtility.HtmlEncode(SPWeb.OriginalBaseUrl(Request) + "?wsdl"),Response.Output); %>
docRef=<% SPHttpUtility.AddQuote(SPHttpUtility.HtmlEncode(SPWeb.OriginalBaseUrl(Request)),Response.Output); %>
xmlns="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/disco/scl/" />
<soap address=<% SPHttpUtility.AddQuote(SPHttpUtility.HtmlEncode(SPWeb.OriginalBaseUrl(Request)),Response.Output); %>
xmlns:q1="http://tempuri.org/" binding="q1:InfoPathAttachmentSoap" xmlns="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/disco/soap/" />
<soap address=<% SPHttpUtility.AddQuote(SPHttpUtility.HtmlEncode(SPWeb.OriginalBaseUrl(Request)),Response.Output); %>
xmlns:q2="http://tempuri.org/" binding="q2:InfoPathAttachmentSoap12" xmlns="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/disco/soap/" />
Fifth, in the WSDL file, go to the every end of the file and you will find the following soap nodes.
<soap:address location="http://localhost/foo/InfoPathAttachment.asmx" />
<soap12:address location="http://localhost/foo/InfoPathAttachment.asmx" />
Change them to be:
<soap:address location=<% SPHttpUtility.AddQuote(SPHttpUtility.HtmlEncode(SPWeb.OriginalBaseUrl(Request)),Response.Output); %> />
<soap12:address location=<% SPHttpUtility.AddQuote(SPHttpUtility.HtmlEncode(SPWeb.OriginalBaseUrl(Request)),Response.Output); %> />
DONE - That is really as simple as it gets!
4.0 Deploying the Service
Next we need to deploy this web service. I was disappointed in the MSDN Article because instructions had you go directly into the files of the server and dropping files on manually. In this blog, the author had you putting DLLs in both the GAC and the web bin directory. Nuts!
As I have said before, if I cannot deploy using a SharePoint solution you should probably reconsider your deployment plan. Plus, I have to consider the fact that if I have a SharePoint farm, I will have to manually put the files up on each server which is a drag. In this section I will show you how to create a WSP solution that you can use to deploy your custom SharePoint web service. Note, was not simple and required me to refresh myself of CAS.
It is a well known best practice to deploy all of your DLLs to the web bin directory (i.e. C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\80\bin). The reason why is:
4.1 Sign both Projects
You will need to sign both the web service and the utilities libraries. Even though they will not be deployed to the GAC, to write a CAS Policy we will need them to be signed to ensure they are uniquely named.
4.2 APTC the WSSDistillery.Utilities Project
When I was going through the deployment steps farther down I started to get errors, specifically when making the web service call. The errors were saying that partially trusted callers are not permitted. What was basically occurring was the WSSDistillery.Utilities class does not fully trust the web service call. This would occur because the web service DLL is in the SharePoint web site bin directory and not in the GAC. Even if I put the WSSDistillery.Utilities in the GAC, I would still get this error. The solution is to add the following into the AssemblyInfo .cs file of the WSSDistillery.Utilities project.
[assembly: System.Security.AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers]
I did some reading and found out that Microsoft.SharePoint allow partially trusted callers too; then I did not feel too bad. The deal is that make sure you are not susceptible to injection if you are going to allow this.
4.3 Manifest File
Next I create the following manifest.xml file which will deploy the DLLs and the .asmx and .aspx files to the ISPI folder. You do not need to create any sort of SharePoint Feature because all we are doing is pushing files on to the web servers. I am going to provide you with two options and this will work in a production environment that is running under minimal trust.
Before going continuing it would be good to open a Visual Studio command prompt and run the following commands as you will need these values when setting up the CAS policies:
sn -Tp C:\WSSDistillery\Utilities\WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPathAttachment\bin\WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPath.dll
sn -Tp C:\WSSDistillery\Utilities\WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPathAttachment\bin\WSSDistillery.Utilities.dll
4.3.1 Option 1
In this option I deploy on DLL to the GAC and one to the web bin. What we are doing is allowing the web service to run in a safe mode.
<Solution xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/"
SolutionId="2583E0DD-2B0E-41b4-BFF3-4D4100B3D11B">
<Assemblies>
<Assembly Location="WSSDistillery.Utilities.dll" DeploymentTarget="GlobalAssemblyCache" />
<Assembly Location="WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPath.dll" DeploymentTarget="WebApplication">
<SafeControls>
<SafeControl Assembly="WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPath.InfoPathAttachment, WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPath, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=7e600b50acc43694"
Namespace="WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPath"
Safe="True"
TypeName="*"/>
</SafeControls>
</Assembly>
</Assemblies>
<RootFiles>
<RootFile Location="ISAPI\InfoPathAttachment.asmx"/>
<RootFile Location="ISAPI\InfoPathAttachmentdisco.aspx"/>
<RootFile Location="ISAPI\InfoPathAttachmentwsdl.aspx"/>
</RootFiles>
<CodeAccessSecurity>
<PolicyItem>
<Assemblies>
<Assembly PublicKeyBlob="[ADD VALUE]"/>
</Assemblies>
<PermissionSet class="NamedPermissionSet" Name="WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPath" version="1" Description="Permission for WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPath">
<IPermission class="AspNetHostingPermission" version="1" Level="Minimal" />
<IPermission class="SecurityPermission" version="1" Flags="Execution" />
<IPermission class="Microsoft.SharePoint.Security.SharePointPermission, Microsoft.SharePoint.Security, version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" version="1" Unrestricted="True" />
</PermissionSet>
</PolicyItem>
</CodeAccessSecurity>
</Solution>
4.3.2 Option 2
In this option I deploy both DLLs to the web site bin directory.
<Solution xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/"
SolutionId="2583E0DD-2B0E-41b4-BFF3-4D4100B3D11B">
<Assemblies>
<Assembly Location="WSSDistillery.Utilities.dll" DeploymentTarget="WebApplication">
<SafeControls>
<SafeControl Assembly="WSSDistillery.Utilities.Folder, WSSDistillery.Utilities, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=5695a828a53b1107"
Namespace="WSSDistillery.Utilities"
Safe="True"
TypeName="*"/>
<SafeControl Assembly="WSSDistillery.Utilities.InfoPathForm, WSSDistillery.Utilities, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=5695a828a53b1107"
Namespace="WSSDistillery.Utilities"
Safe="True"
TypeName="*"/>
<SafeControl Assembly="WSSDistillery.Utilities.Items, WSSDistillery.Utilities, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=5695a828a53b1107"
Namespace="WSSDistillery.Utilities"
Safe="True"
TypeName="*"/>
</SafeControls>
</Assembly>
<Assembly Location="WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPath.dll" DeploymentTarget="WebApplication">
<SafeControls>
<SafeControl Assembly="WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPath.InfoPathAttachment, WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPath, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=7e600b50acc43694"
Namespace="WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPath"
Safe="True"
TypeName="*"/>
</SafeControls>
</Assembly>
</Assemblies>
<RootFiles>
<RootFile Location="ISAPI\InfoPathAttachment.asmx"/>
<RootFile Location="ISAPI\InfoPathAttachmentdisco.aspx"/>
<RootFile Location="ISAPI\InfoPathAttachmentwsdl.aspx"/>
</RootFiles>
<CodeAccessSecurity>
<PolicyItem>
<Assemblies>
<Assembly PublicKeyBlob="[ADD VALUE]"/>
</Assemblies>
<PermissionSet class="NamedPermissionSet" Name="WSSDistillery.Utilities" version="1" Description="Permission for WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPath">
<IPermission class="AspNetHostingPermission" version="1" Level="Minimal" />
<IPermission class="SecurityPermission" version="1" Flags="Execution" />
<IPermission class="Microsoft.SharePoint.Security.SharePointPermission, Microsoft.SharePoint.Security, version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" version="1" Unrestricted="True" />
<IPermission class="System.Security.Permissions.FileIOPermission, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" version="1" Read="C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS" />
</PermissionSet>
</PolicyItem>
<PolicyItem>
<Assemblies>
<Assembly PublicKeyBlob="[ADD VALUE]"/>
</Assemblies>
<PermissionSet class="NamedPermissionSet" Name="WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPath" version="1" Description="Permission for WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPath">
<IPermission class="AspNetHostingPermission" version="1" Level="Minimal" />
<IPermission class="SecurityPermission" version="1" Flags="Execution" />
<IPermission class="Microsoft.SharePoint.Security.SharePointPermission, Microsoft.SharePoint.Security, version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" version="1" Unrestricted="True" />
</PermissionSet>
</PolicyItem>
</CodeAccessSecurity>
</Solution>
4.4 Create a ddf File
Second you will need to create .ddf file, with the following commands. I usually just call this WSP.ddf and I add it to my web service project. This will package up the two DLLs and the three web service files.
.OPTION Explicit
.Set CabinetNameTemplate="WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPath.wsp"
.Set DiskDirectory1="C:\ "
manifest.xml
%outputDir%WSSDistillery.Utilities.dll
%outputDir%WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPath.dll
.Set DestinationDir="ISAPI"
InfoPathAttachment.asmx
InfoPathAttachmentdisco.aspx
InfoPathAttachmentwsdl.aspx
; if we don't delete this variable, we get an error.
.Delete outputDir
4.5 Project Post Build Events
Then I add the following to the post build events of the Web Service project which will build the WSP every time I have successful build of the web service project.
cd $(ProjectDir)
MakeCAB /D outputDir=$(OutDir) /f "WSP.ddf"
4.6 Deployment Scripts
Now all you need to do is running the following STSADM command to push the solution out. Note you have to provide the URL of the web server because the DLLs are deployed to the web site bin and not the GAC.
stsadm.exe -o addsolution -filename C:\WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPath.wsp
stsadm.exe -o deploysolution -url http://MyServer/ -name WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPath.wsp -allowGacDeployment -allowCasPolicies -immediate -force
stsadm.exe -o execadmsvcjobs
Now test it, simply go to http://MyServer/_vti_bin/InfoPathAttachment.asmx and you will see the new web service.
4.7 Changes to Custom Web Service
If you make changes to the custom web service, like adding a new method or parameter to your WebMethod you will need to regenerate the WSDL that was described earlier. Then you will need repackage everything including the recompiled DLLs and push all of the changes back out using the WSP solution.
stsadm.exe -o retractsolution -url http://MyServer/ -name WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPath.wsp -immediate
stsadm.exe -o execadmsvcjobs
stsadm.exe -o deletesolution -name WSSDistillery.Utilities.Service.InfoPath.wsp
4.8 Making Web Service Discoverable in Visual Studio
This is completely optional, however the MSDN Article mentions that to make the web service discoverable in Visual Studio as a web service alongside the default Windows SharePoint Services web services you need to modify spdisco.aspx file that is located in the ISPI folder in the 12 hive. You will need to make this change on every server in the farm.
<contractRef ref=<% SPHttpUtility.AddQuote(SPHttpUtility.HtmlEncode(spWeb.Url + "/_vti_bin/InfoPathAttachment.asmx?wsdl"), Response.Output); %>
docRef=<% SPHttpUtility.AddQuote(SPHttpUtility.HtmlEncode(spWeb.Url + "/_vti_bin/InfoPathAttachment.asmx"), Response.Output); %>
xmlns=" http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/disco/scl/ " />
<discoveryRef ref=<% SPHttpUtility.AddQuote(SPHttpUtility.HtmlEncode(spWeb.Url + "/_vti_bin/InfoPathAttachment.asmx?disco"),Response.Output); %>
xmlns="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/disco/" />
5.0 Using in InfoPath
I am not going to dive much farther to InfoPath development at this point. If you can get these methods created, you should be good to go from here. Below are a few notes to get you going.
5.1 Web Service Data Connection
Hooking this into you InfoPath form is really straight forward. All you need to do is create a data connection using a web service to http://MyServer/_layouts/InfoPathAttachment.asmx. When creating that web service data connection, do not select submit option, make sure you select retrieve option. I am going to skip the rest of the configuration of the web service data connection as that should be pretty simple.
5.2 Create an Upload Button
The only other little trick you will need to know is that on your InfoPath form, you will need to add a binary data field (base64) into the main source. The reason why is if you try to use the binary field in web service data connection on the form, InfoPath will not allow you to use the attachment control. Now I bet if you crack open the manifest.xsf file you can probably resolve this issue.
Below is a screen shot of a rule I created on a button that will upload a file from the IP from to the SharePoint server. Now all you need to do is create a rule to clear out the main data source attachment field and then create a third rule that will call the GetAttachments web method.
With all of these web methods you could satisfy a use case like:5.3 SharePoint Farm?
If you SharePoint farm that has several front-end web servers that are load balanced, you may run into an issue when making a connection to SharePoint web service when the InfoPath form is running in a web enabled mode. I ran into this issue a long time ago when trying to use the SharePoint Profile web service to get the current users information when using a web enabled InfoPath form (read this blog). You will need to use the URL to the web server directly instead of the load balanced URL. I have never dug any deeper into why this; if you scroll down in the responses of the blog you will see the issue that everyone runs into.
6.0 References
I did get some help along the way:
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