SharePoint 2010 Gov to Gov Event

Over the past several years US Federal Agencies have highly adopted SharePoint as a platform to address numerous enterprise needs.  SharePoint 2010 has significant features and capabilities that are tightly integrated in areas of Collaboration, Enterprise Content Management, Enterprise Search, Business Intelligence, Social Computing, Enterprise Applications and Systems Integration to name a few. 

You are invited to come listen to presentations by Treasury.gov and USDA present how they are using SharePoint 2010 today to meet their business needs.  Come join the community of Federal Agencies for engaging discussions about SharePoint Internet and Records Management implementations.  Microsoft will also provide a demonstration on TeleWork; enabling you to change where you work and not how you work.

These sessions will provide insight for your SharePoint initiatives.  The intended audience is US Federal IT Professionals (both business and technical).   We encourage insightful and meaningful conversation during these presentations with your peers.

When:

Thursday April 14, 2011

· Event Registration - 8:30 to 9:00 AM

· Sessions - 9:00 AM to 2:30 PM

· Lunch - Due to Federal Gift Giving policies lunch will not be provided.  Lunch purchase options will be available onsite or short walk away.

Registration:

Please go to register for the event - https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032480489&Culture=en-US

Where:

Microsoft Chevy Chase Office

5404 Wisconsin Ave, Suite 700

Chevy Chase, Maryland 20815

Phone: (301) 771-8000

Microsoft Chevy Chase Office Web Site

Metro Train – Red Line Friendship Heights

United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) – Agriculture Marketing Service (AMS)

AMS has developed an electronic records center built on SharePoint 2010 technology.  The records center allows AMS employees to use Office applications to store official electronic records in an Enterprise Content Repository.  The repository allows end users to search for records they have created or to which they have viewing permission.  A custom built records management ribbon for the Office suite allows users to designate a records category, document title, audience and keywords before filing the document in the repository.

Fariba Tacoukjou

Senior Developer – USDA – AMS - Information Technology Services

Department of Treasury Public Internet

Treasury.gov is built utilizing SharePoint 2010 and FAST search on the Amazon Cloud environment with an Akamai content delivery network cloaking the infrastructure.  This platform is a fully managed cloud hosting solution that is built to scale and accommodate many IIS and SharePoint websites. Currently this environment hosts Treasury.gov, FinancialStability.gov, MakingHomeAffordable.gov, MyMoney.gov, SigTarp.gov, Tigta.gov and IRSOversightBoard.gov.  Come learn how Treasury.gov was able to meet aggressive timelines and successfully deliver a highly scalable solution.

Greg Galipeau

Enterprise Architect - Department of Treasury, Office of Chief Information Officer, HRConnect Program Office and Web Team

Microsoft TeleWork Solution for US Federal

Under the 2010 TeleWork Enhancement Act (H.R. 1722), Federal Agencies aggressive timelines to establish a policy on working outside the office, identify eligible employees and inform them of the option.  Come see how Microsoft provides secure business productivity solutions for TeleWork.  Microsoft will demonstrate how to change Where You Work, not How You Work.

Bob Straker and Jason Apergis

Microsoft SharePoint Technical Solution Professionals

Registration:

Please go to register for the event - https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032480489&Culture=en-US

K2 User March 2010 User Group – K2 blackpearl 4.5

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.

------------------------------------------------------

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:

• Start Live Meeting client, and then in Voice & Video pane under Join Audio options, click Call Me. The conferencing service will call you at the number you specify. (Recommended)
  

Use the information below to connect:

Toll: +1 (719) 867-1571
Participant code: 914421
First Time Users: To save time before the meeting, check your system to make sure it is ready to use Microsoft Office Live Meeting.

Copy and paste the required information:

Location: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/scna
Meeting ID: 34PCR2
Entry Code: s53+9^P

Troubleshooting

Unable to join the meeting? Follow these steps:

Copy this address and paste it into your web browser: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/scna/join?id=CH5CQQ&role=attend&pw=k3T@z(h

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!

K2 User Group July 2009

There will be a cool User Group this month on K2 and doing custom reporting with SSRS and PerformancePoint – looking forward to it.

------------------------

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 5^th floor, but the meeting will be held in a 2^nd 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://k2underground.com/k2/InterestGroupHome.aspx?IntGroupID=11. We are posting webexes/live meetings from our meetings at this site.

08/11/2009 11am – 1pm
09/8/2009 11am – 1pm
10/13/2009 11am – 1pm
11/10/2009 11am – 1pm
12/8/2009 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 & Company & Sponsor:

Jonathan King will be presenting an array of ideas on how to approach custom reporting in both K2 blackpearl and K2 blackpoint. He will be demonstrating a number of custom reports developed using SSRS upon both standard K2 process information and SmartObject information as well as how to develop Process Maps in Microsoft PerformancePoint.

K2 blackpoint, a subset of K2 blackpearl features, provides unparalleled capabilities and affordability. It also offers an upgrade path so that organizations can grow their investment and add complexity over time, if needed.

For more information, go to http://www.blackpoint.k2.com.

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:

Jonathan King is the K2 Technical Specialist for Europe and is responsible for promoting the K2 suite of products with prospects, customer, partners and the broader K2 community. Jonathan has been working with K2 products for the past five years the last three of which have been directly for K2 out of their European head office in London. Jonathan is available at jonno@k2.com.

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:

 Start Live Meeting client, and then in Voice & Video pane under Join Audio options, click Call Me. The conferencing service will call you at the number you specify. (Recommended)

 Use the information below to connect:
Toll: +1 (719) 867-1571

Toll-free: +1 (877) 860-3058

Participant code: 914421

First Time Users:

To save time before the meeting, check your system to make sure it is ready to use Microsoft Office Live Meeting.
Troubleshooting
Unable to join the meeting? Follow these steps:

Copy this address and paste it into your web browser:

1. Copy this address and paste it into your web browser:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/scna/join?id=KRQ226&role=attend

2. Or Copy and paste the required information:

Location: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/scna1

Meeting ID: KRQ226

Entry Code: NO Entry code for attendees

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!

Patti Albracht

K2 May User Group

Anthony Petro (Technical Product Manager for K2) will be presenting on the 90x releases for K2 blackpearl and blackpoint. Please tune in and ask questions.

--------------------------------

Tuesday, May 12, 11am-1pm central time

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 5^th floor, but the meeting will be held in a 2^nd 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://k2underground.com/k2/InterestGroupHome.aspx?IntGroupID=11. We are posting webexes/live meetings from our meetings at this site.

06/9/2009 11am – 1pm
07/14/2009 11am – 1pm
08/11/2009 11am – 1pm
09/8/2009 11am – 1pm
10/13/2009 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 & Company & Sponsor:

We thank Anthony Petro from K2 for
presenting at our May K2 user group meeting. Anthony will be giving our K2 User group a sneak peak at the new features coming up in the 90x release of K2 BlackPearl. Don't miss this meeting, you will be the first of the K2 user community to know what's new.

We thank K2 for providing our presenter and Joe Bocardo from K2 for sponsoring our refreshments at our May meeting.

K2 blackpoint, a subset of K2 blackpearl features, provides unparalleled capabilities and affordability. It also offers an upgrade path so that organizations can grow their investment and add complexity over time, if needed.

For more information, go to http://www.blackpoint.k2.com.

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:

Anthony Petro resides in Silverthorne, Colorado and is the Technical Product Manager for K2. He started his professional career in the consulting world 14 years ago and has always remained focused on Microsoft technologies and solutions. He joined Microsoft in 2001 and spent the next 5 years heavily immersed in SharePoint Joint Development Programs bridging the gap between the product development teams in Redmond and the enterprise customers around the world. He was a strong contributor to the SharePoint community in its infancy focused on teaching the masses about the complexities of search and enterprise scale and using products such as K2 filling the enterprise workflow gaps of SharePoint. He joined K2 in 2006 to help bring K2 blackpearl to market through early adopter programs that spanned the alpha and beta cycles through to RTM. Anthony remains actively involved in early adopter programs for K2 blackpoint and K2 connect and planning the future releases of all product lines.

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:

 Start Live Meeting client, and then in Voice & Video pane under Join Audio options, click Call Me. The conferencing service will call you at the number you specify. (Recommended)

 Use the information below to connect:
Toll: +1 (719) 867-1571

Toll-free: +1 (877) 860-3058

Participant code: 914421

First Time Users:

To save time before the meeting, check your system to make sure it is ready to use Microsoft Office Live Meeting.
Troubleshooting
Unable to join the meeting? Follow these steps:

Copy this address and paste it into your web browser:

1. Copy this address and paste it into your web browser:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/scna1/join

2. Copy and paste the required information:

Meeting ID: RPFR8T
Entry Code: M~`5~pd!p
Location: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/scna1

If you would like to provide refreshments at an upcoming meeting or present at an upcoming meeting, please contact me.

Our next meeting announcement will be sent out next Tuesday.

Let me know if you have any questions prior to the meeting.

April 2009 K2 User Group

Update 4/16/2009 - here is the recorded presentation.

All,

I will be making a presentation to the K2 User Group on Tuesday April 14^th from 11am to 1pm central US time. Below is information for attending via LiveMeeting.

I will be making a presentation on how to do document management with SharePoint and K2 with no code. This is a demo that I have given a few times and really demonstrates the power of the wizards within K2 to some really effective business processing. The information below says that the demo is on blackpoint, however it is all built on blackpearl. However since it is a no code implementation, it can be done completely on blackpoint…

---------------------------------------

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 5^th floor, but the meeting will be held in a 2^nd 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://k2underground.com/k2/InterestGroupHome.aspx?IntGroupID=11. We are posting webexes/live meetings from our meetings at this site.

5/12/2009 11am – 1pm
06/9/2009 11am – 1pm
07/14/2009 11am – 1pm
08/11/2009 11am – 1pm
09/8/2009 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 Wrap up

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 & Company:

We thank Jason Apergis from MicroLink for
presenting at our April K2 user group meeting. Jason will be demonstrating a K2 BlackPoint document management workflow with no code that contains InfoPath, site creation, permission management, topology management, site templates, content types, sharepoint integrated workflow for word documents, document metadata updating, emails, etc.

Founded in 1998, MicroLink provides Business Intelligence, Information Discovery, Portals, and Collaboration solutions. MicroLink has a history of providing reliable, high quality, customer-driven solutions that focus on improving productivity, collaboration, and teamwork throughout our customers' enterprise. With a reputation for consistent, superior performance, and outstanding work in the public sector and commercial organizations MicroLink has earned the respect of its clients, partners, and employees. In recognition of this dedication, MicroLink has received the following awards; 2007 Autonomy Global Partner of the Year, 2008 Microsoft Federal Repeatable Solutions Award, 2007 Microsoft Federal Partner of the Year, and the 2007 and 2006 Microsoft DoD Partner of the Year, IBM Cognos client award for Excellence in the Public Sector 2008.

Meeting Presenters:

Jason Apergis is a coauthor on the recent WROX Professional K2 BlackPearl book that was released. He authored the chapter on InfoPath, SmartObjects and Deployments. Jason is also a K2 Insider. He currently works for MicroLink LLC as a Solution Architect focusing on MOSS and Business Process Automation solutions. Over the past four years Jason has done a lot of work with K2.net integrating it with BizTalk, SharePoint 2003/2007, InfoPath, ASP.net, SSIS, mainframes and other non-MS technologies. One of the solutions was nominated for a Microsoft Partner of the Year solution in 2006. Jason is a Virginia Tech alumni completing both his undergrad and masters in Information Technology. He plays ice hockey on a regular basis and is a huge Washington Capitals fan.

Meeting Sponsor:

We thank Jason Moseley from Hitachi Consulting for sponsoring our refreshments at our April meeting. Hitachi is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with a full range of business solutions and services for strategy and organization effectiveness, business intelligence and performance management, customer and channel (including CRM) and strategic technologies (including IT architecture and SOA).

Hitachi Consulting is widely recognized leader in delivering practical, value-based business strategies and technology solutions. From business strategy development through application deployment, we are committed to helping clients quickly realize measurable business value and achieve sustainable ROI.

For more information please contact Jason Moseley, Senior Manager Hitachi Consulting (amoseley@hitachiconsulting.com, 972-768-2789)

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:

 Start Live Meeting client, and then in Voice & Video pane under Join Audio options, click Call Me. The conferencing service will call you at the number you specify. (Recommended)

 Use the information below to connect:
Toll: +1 (719) 867-1571

Toll-free: +1 (877) 860-3058

Participant code: 914421

First Time Users:

To save time before the meeting, check your system to make sure it is ready to use Microsoft Office Live Meeting.
Troubleshooting
Unable to join the meeting? Follow these steps:

Copy this address and paste it into your web browser:

1. https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/scna1/join?id=KZ3QJJ&role=attend&pw=7%21j%27mJ%28%7BP

2. Copy and paste the required information:

Meeting ID: KZ3QJJ

Entry Code: 7!j'mJ({P
Location: https://www119.livemeeting.com/cc/scna

If you would like to provide refreshments at an upcoming meeting or present at an upcoming meeting, please contact me.

Our next meeting announcement will be sent out next Tuesday.

Let me know if you have any questions prior to the meeting.

February K2 User Groups

There are two K2 user groups meetings for the month of February which you can attend virtually…

The second one has already passed but the recording should be available on the K2 Underground.

February 10, 11am-1pm central time – K2 blackpoint Preview

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 5^th floor, but the meeting will be held in a 2^nd floor conference room. Once off the elevator, go to the reception area and we will bring you back to the conference room.

If you haven't already done so, 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://k2underground.com/k2/InterestGroupHome.aspx?IntGroupID=11. We are posting webexes/live meetings from our meetings at this site.

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 & Company:

Michelle Salazar from K2 will be presenting on K2 BlackPoint. K2 blackpoint, a subset of K2 blackpearl features, provides unparalleled capabilities and affordability. It also offers an upgrade path so that organizations can grow their investment and add complexity over time, if needed. Michelle will demonstrate to us the features available in K2 and the ease of use in developing workflows with it.

For more information, go to http://www.blackpoint.k2.com.

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:

Michelle Salazar

Michelle Salazar resides in Dallas, TX and before joining K2 she held a variety of positions in the information technology field. Her primary focus has been on developing enterprise-class Windows and web-based applications using Microsoft technologies.

Meeting Sponsor:

We thank Michael Steinberg from Pariveda Solutions for sponsoring our refreshments at our August meeting.

Pariveda Solutions is a mid-market IT Consulting firm with offices in Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, and Seattle. We are in the Business of IT®. We empower Information Technology organizations to function more like services companies inside their corporate enterprises. From the way they define their internal strategy, to the way they deploy their resources and provide value to the business, our proven methodology drives costs out of IT while improving internal service quality and responsiveness. This organizational transformation is necessary and foundational for any IT enterprise engaging in the Business of IT®.

For more information please contact
Michael Steinberg, Pariveda Solutions (michael.steinberg@parivedasolutions.com www.parivedasolutions.com (214) 557-0558)

For more information

There is another K2 User Group in Denver, Colorado led by Paul DeFrees. They meet the 1^st Tuesday of every month from 6pm – 8pm Mountain time or 7pm-9pm Central time. If you would like to know more about their user group and would like to receive meeting announcements, please email Paul DeFrees at paul.defrees@baxa.com. Their next meeting is February 3^rd and one of their members will be presenting a K2 BlackPearl application.

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:

 Start Live Meeting client, and then in Voice & Video pane under Join Audio options, click Call Me. The conferencing service will call you at the number you specify. (Recommended)

 Use the information below to connect:
Toll-free: +1 (877) 860-3058

Toll: +1 (719) 867-1571

Participant code: 914421

First Time Users:

To save time before the meeting, check your system to make sure it is ready to use Microsoft Office Live Meeting.
Troubleshooting
Unable to join the meeting? Follow these steps:

Copy this address and paste it into your web browser:

1. https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/scna1/join?id=Z2RP5R&role=attend&pw=TBK%3BWj37j

2. Copy and paste the required information:
Meeting ID: Z2RP5R

Entry Code: TBK;Wj37j
Location: https://www119.livemeeting.com/cc/scna

February 3, 6 to 8pm central time – Underwriting Solution

The next K2 User Group meeting in Denver will be held today, February 3rd, from 6pm to 8pm MST.

The meeting will again be hosted at Baxa located at 14445 Grasslands Dr, Englewood, CO 80112. Here is a map to the Baxa office. There is plenty of parking available around the building and it's fairly close to E470, so please join us in person, if possible. For those of you who cannot attend in person, we will have a Live Meeting session available. This information is located at the bottom of this e-mail.

If you are interested in receiving these notifications in the future, please register for the Denver User Group on the K2 Underground. If you would prefer to not be contacted again, please let me know so I can remove your name from the list.

Agenda:

6:00 - 6:15 Networking/Refreshments
6:15 - 6:30 Announcements
6:30 - 7:45 Presentation by Scott Daub from Imerica
7:45 - 8:00 Meeting Wrap-up

Presentation Summary:

This month, Scott Daub, a K2 customer with Imerica, will present the workflow he implemented at his company to manage their underwriting process. The Underwriting process is the core decision making process in their business. They had a need to rapidly build a replacement to the existing system. The presentation will walk through the initial implementation and how it evolved over four months. He will talk about some the lessons learned and the pain points of the development cycle as well as some plans for the future of this process.

Scott began working with K2 about five years ago as a consultant and has used it on a variety of projects. He joined Imerica Life and Health Insurance in June as a Lead Developer where he implemented the underwriting process using K2 and has big plans for using K2 in other areas of the company.

As always, bring your K2 or workflow questions for discussion with the group and get help from those have been there or who are working on similar processes or challenges. Anthony will help you work through your design scenarios or issues, so bring your tough questions!

January 2009 User Group

The infamous Bob Maggio will be presenting K2 blackpearl debugging and troubleshooting on January 13, 11am-1pm central time. Information to attend remotely is below!

----------

Phillip Knight from Merit Energy will be hosting the K2 user group meetings at Merit Energy, located at 13727 Noel Road, Fourth Floor Rodessa 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. PLEASE NOTE: Conference room has changed for this meeting.

Link to map: http://www.meritenergy.com/content/MeritMap.pdf. Reminder: Merit Energy is on the 5^th floor, but the meeting will be held in a 2^nd floor conference room. Once off the elevator, go to the reception area and we will bring you back to the conference room.

If you haven't already done so, 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://k2underground.com/k2/InterestGroupHome.aspx?IntGroupID=11. We are posting webexes/live meetings from our meetings at this site.

02/10/2009 11am – 1pm
03/10/2009 11am – 1pm
04/14/2009 11am – 1pm
5/12/2009 11am – 1pm
06/9/2009 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 & Company & Sponsor:

Bob Maggio from K2 will be presenting on debugging and troubleshooting techniques in K2 BlackPearl. This will be a great presentation for those of us who are new to K2 BlackPearl development and those of us that are just new to K2 BlackPearl.

K2 blackpoint, a subset of K2 blackpearl features, provides unparalleled capabilities and affordability. It also offers an upgrade path so that organizations can grow their investment and add complexity over time, if needed.

For more information, go to http://www.blackpoint.k2.com.

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:

Bob Maggio

Bob Maggio lives in Fort Mill, SC and has been part of the North American K2 Professional Services team since 2005. Before K2 he was a member of various production and application development teams focusing on implementation of Microsoft technologies.

For Virtual Attendees:

Note: please keep your phone on mute until you are ready to speak.

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Telephone conferencing
Choose one of the following:

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K2 November 2008 User Groups

Hey – there are two user groups for K2 and both are having meeting on Nov. 11. Both seem really interesting and you can attend virtually if you like.

• Project Server Automation – very interested to see what can be done here…
• Event Bus by the infamous Anthony Petro!

Also note that if you miss these, Chris Geier has been posting past user group presentations.

Denver K2 User group Home and Greater Texas User Group Home

The SmartObject intro I gave last month is posted on the Denver's User Group site.

Microsoft Project Server Automation Presentation

Many companies use Microsoft Project Server to assist in the management of complex projects of all sorts. However, often these complex projects need to follow customer specific processes around project creation, issue and risk management that Project Server doesn't provide out of the box. Using a Business Process Management suite such as K2 BlackPearl, customer project management processes can be automated so that the project owners and project managers can ensure that the correct policies are enforced and are auditable. Join this presentation to see how K2 BlackPearl was extended through its SmartObject technology to allow integration with Project Server 2007 and see demonstrations of how customers might use this type of integration.

Tim Knechtel has been with K2 for 4 years as a Technical Specialist working with customers and partners to help automate their business processes. Prior to working for K2 Tim worked at Microsoft for 9 years as a Technical Specialist focusing on Project Server, SharePoint and Exchange. With over 15 years of industry experience as a infrastructure specialist and software developer Tim enjoys getting software to work as the users would expect it to. In his free time Tim enjoys spending time with his family, playing hockey and running.

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

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:

• Start Live Meeting client, and then in Voice & Video pane under Join Audio options, click Call Me. The conferencing service will call you at the number you specify. (Recommended)
  
• Use the information below to connect:
  Toll-free: +1 (888) 296-6500
  

  Toll: +1 (913) 227-1219
  

  Participant code: 224648
  

First Time Users:

To save time before the meeting, check your system to make sure it is ready to use Microsoft Office Live Meeting.
Troubleshooting
Unable to join the meeting? Follow these steps:

1. Copy this address and paste it into your web browser:
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Event Bus Presentation

This month, Anthony Petro will present an introduction to the K2 Event Bus. The K2 Event Bus provides the infrastructure and tools to allow business users to model notifications and custom actions based on events in K2 workflow processes, SmartObjects, line- of- business (LOB) systems, and single or recurring schedules. The events are configured to evaluate and execute policies independent of the context of a workflow process or LOB system activity, such as a SmartObject Create method. The policies can range from simple e-mail notifications configured in the K2 Workspace to fully customized .NET code.

Anthony Petro is the Technical Product Manager for K2. He started his professional career in the consulting world 14 years ago and has always remained focused on Microsoft technologies and solutions. He joined Microsoft in 2001 and spent the next 5 years heavily immersed in SharePoint Joint Development Programs bridging the gap between the product development teams in Redmond and the enterprise customers around the world. He was a strong contributor to the SharePoint community in its infancy focused on teaching the masses about the complexities of search and enterprise scale and using products such as K2 filling the enterprise workflow gaps of SharePoint. He joined K2 in 2006 to help bring K2 blackpearl to market through early adopter programs that spanned the alpha and beta cycles through to RTM. Anthony remains actively involved in early adopter programs for K2 blackpoint and K2 connect and planning the future releases of all product lines.

Agenda:

6:00 - 6:15 Networking/Refreshments

6:15 - 6:30 Announcements

6:30 - 7:45 Presentation by Anthony Petro from K2

7:45 - 8:00 Meeting Wrap-up

Start Time:	Tuesday, Nov 11, 2008 6:00 PM MDT
End Time:	Tuesday, Nov 11, 2008 8:00 PM MDT
Occurrence:	Recurring meeting
Meeting Lobby:	Not enabled
Attendee URL:	https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/scna/join?id=CK6G4W&role=attend&pw=F59%3EKcr
Meeting ID:	CK6G4W
Attendee Entry Code:	F59>Kcr
Location:
Audio:	Two way computer audio conferencing: Off One way computer audio broadcasting: Off Telephone conferencing: On Audio conferencing provider: Other Toll free: +1 (913) 227-1219 Participant code: 994729

Denver K2 User Group SmartObjects

Update 4/16/2009 - here is a link to the recorded presentation.

I have been asked to speak about SmartObjects at the Denver K2 User Group. I will be doing it virtually. If you like to attend, please tune in. It will be a nice intro into all of the aspects of SmartObjects and if you have any questions, please come with them.

----------------------------

Hello everyone,

The next K2 User Group meeting in Denver is fast approaching and will be held on October 7th from 6pm to 8pm.

The meeting will again be hosted at Baxa located at 14445 Grasslands Dr, Englewood, CO 80112. Here is a map to the Baxa office. There is plenty of parking available around the building and it's fairly close to E470, so please join us in person, if possible. For those of you who cannot attend in person, we will have a Live Meeting session available. This information is located at the bottom of this e-mail.

Please RSVP to me by Friday, October 3rd whether you will be attending in person (so we can plan for food) or via the Live Meeting. If you are interested in receiving these notifications in the future, please register for the Denver User Group on the K2 Underground. If you would prefer to not be contacted again, please let me know so I can remove your name from the list.

Agenda:

6:00 - 6:15 Networking/Refreshments

6:15 - 6:30 Announcements

6:30 - 7:15 Presentation by Jason Apergis from RDA Corporation

7:30 - 7:45 Round Table Discussion

7:45 - 8:00 Meeting Wrap-up

Presentation Summary:
Jason will be talking about the beauty and power of K2 SmartObjects. During this session Jason will be going into the SmartObject basics but will also show you how to create them and their associated ServiceObjects.

Jason Apergis is a software consultant who has lived in the Washington, DC area his entire life. Jason currently works for a Microsoft Gold Partner named RDA Corporation as a technical project manager and has worked for various other consulting firms like BearingPoint and AMS. One of Jason's solutions was nominated as a finalist for a Microsoft solution of the year award in 2006 which integrated K2, BizTalk, SharePoint and InfoPath. Jason completed both his undergraduate and graduate degrees in Information Technology from Virginia Tech. Jason plays ice hockey weekly basis and is both an avid Washington Capitals and Virginia Tech Football fan.

Bring your questions or challenges for a round table discussion after the presentation to discuss with the others in the User Group. Have you used SmartObjects yet? How are you using them? What challenges have you faced?

Live Meeting Information:

Start Time: Tuesday, Oct 7, 2008 6:00 PM MDT End Time: Tuesday, Oct 7, 2008 8:00 PM MDT Occurrence: Recurring meeting Meeting Lobby: Not enabled Attendee URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/scna/join?id=CK6G4W&role=attend&pw=F59%3EKcr Meeting ID: CK6G4W Attendee Entry Code: F59>Kcr Location: Audio: Two way computer audio conferencing: Off One way computer audio broadcasting: Off Telephone conferencing: On Audio conferencing provider: Other Toll free: +1 (913) 227-1219Toll: +1 (888) 269-6500 Participant code: 994729 Note: please keep your phone on mute until you are ready to speak.

July 8th, 2008 User Group ASP vs InfoPath

Update 4/16/2009 - here is the recorded presentation

I will be supporting a round table discussion with the K2 User Group based in Texas on July 8th. I will be calling in J

If you want to attend in person, please contact Pattie Albright

Here is the information on the session:

Chris Geier & Mike Tally from K2 and Jason Apergis from RDA Corporation
will be doing a round table discussion on the differences, benefits, pros and cons of InfoPath and asp forms, when to use one or the other, and what works with the InfoPath client and what works with InfoPath in form services

Chris Geier will also be demonstrating a new offering from K2. K2 blackpoint is for SharePoint users that want the ability to build workflows and process-driven applications quickly – without code, without complexity.

With an easy-to-use Office-style designer, create powerful and flexible applications that increase the efficiency of your business.

K2 blackpoint, a subset of K2 blackpearl features, provides unparalleled capabilities and affordability. It also offers an upgrade path so that organizations can grow their investment and add complexity over time, if needed.
For more information, go to http://www.blackpoint.k2.com/.

Meeting Agenda: US Central Time
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

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:

• Start Live Meeting client, and then in Voice & Video pane under Join Audio options, click Call Me. The conferencing service will call you at the number you specify. (Recommended)
  
• Use the information below to connect:
  Toll-free: +1 (888) 296-6500
  

  Toll: +1 (913) 227-1219
  

  Participant code: 224648
  

First Time Users:

To save time before the meeting, check your system to make sure it is ready to use Microsoft Office Live Meeting.
Troubleshooting
Unable to join the meeting? Follow these steps:

1. Copy this address and paste it into your web browser:
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SmartObject Workshop Thoughts

Background

Colin Murphy, Gabriel Malherbe and I held a workshop on SmartObjects at the K2 Insider Conference this April. It was an interesting discussion because the three of us had some conference calls beforehand where tried to gain a better understanding of how to position SmartObjects in the Enterprise Architecture. I wrote a blog that has not been published which all three of us iterated on before the conference. I made some statements in that article (to invoke debate) where I asserted that SmartObjects could be considered SOA. I got beat up a little by colleagues and now admit that SmartObjects are not SOA even though they adhere to many of the tenants of SOA like autonomy, manageability, discoverable, maintainable, exception handling, scalability, reliability, transactionality, security, logging, buildability, interoperability, testability, etc. Maybe it is low on the maturity scale of SOA (level 2 of 5) and I still debate that sometimes that is good enough for many organizations. It can be challenging to get a company to invest to get to a high maturity level of SOA.

So then what are SmartObjects? Here are some excerpts from the slides that we presented.

Before and Now

In the K2 2003 days we would have to go into the client event after the code was generated and start modifying it to get data from external places. Remember that there is no code generation in BlackPearl; it is declarative.

Now all we do is drag and drop smart object references into the canvas to gain access to data; no code.

K2 [blackpearl] Solution

• Blackpearl introduces SmartObjects to solve many of these issues.
• SmartObjects:
• Are reusable business entities which can be deployed centrally and consumed by non-technical workflow authors
• Are a storage location for process data (SmartBox)
• Are a means to quickly access external LOB Data
• Allow developers to aggregate data from multiple backend systems into a single, composite object
• Can be created without writing any code
• Can be accessed outside of the workflow (ADO Provider) and can be reported on

K2 SmartObject in Enterprise Architecture

The following diagram is from a presentation I prepared in November of 2007 for the Texas User Group. At the time I was digging around SmartObjects trying to understand it. From what it looks like my diagram is still spot on.

K2 states that SmartObjects are used to "provision" data into your workflows. K2 uses it as the underpinning to the entire BlackPearl platform. The two things you should know right off are there are SmartObject Services and SmartObjects.

SmartObject Services are:

• The providers that access line of business and expose the data through a common interface.
• They expose methods that can be executed; typically CRUD operations.
• They are registered with the K2 Server and instances of them are created through K2 Workspace.

SmartObjects are:

• Class definitions that have data elements that map into the methods that are provided by the SmartObject Service.
• SmartObjects can be graphically used within K2 to access data.
• SmartObjects have a data provider API which you can easily hook into other tiers of the architecture.

In the end SmartObjects is part of your Data Access layer and they allow you to basically write data providers which are access through SmartObjects.

K2 [blackpearl] Solution

The following are out of the box SmartObject Services that are provided by SharePoint.

• SmartBox (cannot be used for custom SQL Databases)
• SharePoint
• Active Directory – I cannot live without this service when building workflows.
• K2 [blackpearl] – Provides easy access to all data that is within K2.
• Salesforce.com

Blackmarket SmartObject Services

The Blackmarket is a K2's version of CodePlex. It is an area where developers can share code with one another - http://k2underground.com/k2/ProjectLanding.aspx

• Dynamic SQL Stored Procedure Service – Build up Service based on stored procedures in SQL Server. I plan to start using this one because I prefer to be calling stored procedures versus accessing tables and columns directly.
• Dynamic SmartObject Services Service – Build up Service based on schema of a SQL Server instance.
• SharePoint Users in Groups ServiceObject - This ServiceObject when wrapped in a simple SmartObject allows you to leverage SharePoint Groups.
• Office Communication Server Service - The OCS Service Broker allows users to create a SmartObject to send notifications via Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007.
• Dynamic WebService Service– Build up Service based on a web service.
• SmartObject Service Provider for Oracle – Build up Service based on schema of an Oracle instance.
• Dynamic SmartObject Service – Dynamically builds up services that use existing SmartObjects as the datasource. The author says this allows you to create SmartObject Service inheritance.

This catalog of services is going grow as more people start to contribute.

Conclusions

The following are my conclusions after the discussion.

• SmartObjects give you a significant edge in delivering timely solutions with K2. They have provided me the ability to immediately access Active Directory, SQL Databases, etc. We have personally seen that we can now deliver working processes in days instead of weeks because we no longer have to build up custom data access layers and go into the code of K2 and manually access the data. I can use the SmartObjects in a drag and drop fashion in line rules, succeeding rules, preceding rules, emails, destination users/rules, any configuration item in any event wizard, etc. It is ridiculously simple to configure my entire K2 process with data and I have zero custom code to get at the data. Plus I can write C# code in custom event handlers to use SmartObject. The API is really clean, simple and similar to using System.Data.
• Another great thing about SmartObjects is that if you carefully take the time to build them you will start being able to build catalogs of SmartObjects that business users can use when composing their K2 Processes. They will not be exposed to any of the details associated to knowing where the data comes from.
• Right now one concern is the ability to place business rules against the SmartObjects methods. For instance if you use the Dynamic SQL Service which build the interface of the service based on the schema of the database there is no way put business rules on the SmartObject to ensure that a value must be greater than X or cannot be null. So if a business user were to use SmartObject Event in their process they could possibly just start setting invalid data.
• The SmartBox is good for doing early iterations of processes but over the long term you may not want to us them. For instance you have limited control over the schema of the database (because it is generated). As well, you may not want to co-mingle data from different processes in the same database.
• Do not let you SmartObjects replace your Data Warehouse. With SmartObjects it is possible to perform CRUD operations across line of business data sources. It is very tempting to have a SmartObject read from many different places providing a single view of the data despite where the data is being read from. A simple example would have a SmartObject read from Active Directory and SQL Server. You must take performance into consideration when doing something similar to this. Performance issues associated to reading data will be vetted out in the SmartObject Service implementation however if you read in two large data sources and then join them together in the SmartObject layer you will not have the opportunity to index those joins. It would be better to have the SmartObject access data in the Data Warehouse itself.
• This comment will be a little at odds with the first but LINQ, Entity and .Net Data Services make it challenging to position SmartObjects. SmartObjects Services may use them to access data and surface it up through a SmartObject for K2. However many developers will be tempted just use LINQ directly inside your custom server events, middle and UI layers. I have not personally messed with LINQ and Entity as much as I should but from the hype it is pretty rich and provide a full Object Query Language and Object Relational Mapping (ORM). The one nice thing about SmartObjects is that they provide you a way to centralize and publish services.

Notes from April Insider Conference in Denver

I had a fantastic time at the K2 Insider Conference in Denver. Our fearless leader Chris Geier at K2 really put together a top notch conference getting a bunch of really busy people to converge together and share their knowledge of K2. I hope we have another one next year as I will be a first to sign up. It was actually really important that many of us met as K2 BlackPearl has just come out, several us had some implementations under our belts and we needed to discuss what was good, what was bad and get knowledge of what is to come.

There were some things I was not supposed to write about,

Here are some notes I have from the conference:

K2 Website

First if you did not know, their website has been rebranded http://www.k2.com/. It is a little brighter now <g>

Trivia:

• How did they get the "K2" name? It was a build number in one of their very early iterations.
• Where did "BlackPearl" come from? Adriaan's kid is a big fan of Pirates of the Carribean <g>

New Releases

Build 803 is due out in roughly three weeks. It will have:

• Full 64 bit support
• New installer and deployment improvements
• Better support for internationalization
• New patches to support
  
  
  • Visual Studio Stability (that was needed)
  • Workflow performance (some of the stats were impressive)
  • Reporting
  • SmartObject Performance
  • SmartObject Lifecycle
    

Build 805 is due out a little after that with support for various other know bugs, performance, TFS integration, and SAP integration.

Build 806 is due in the Junish timeframe and will have:

• VS 2008 support
• K2 2003 interop support and migration wizards
• K2 Studio RTM (looks really cool)
• Process Portals RTM (was absolutely needed and now provides process managers with a dashboard in SharePoint to see many important information about all processes running)
• Out of Office RTM
• Dynamic SQL Service (rolled in from Blackmarket – Seb is the man)
• Web Service/WCF Workflow template – that is needed!
• BizTalk Templates for 2006 R2 (I used them with K2 2003 – so needed)
  

K2 Studio

I mentioned this above but this is a new skin to the develop K2 workflows. This one will have an office look and feel and will empower business developers to compose workflows outside of visual studio. Visio allows you to compose just the workflow but this environment will allow you to create full solutions with a SmartObject designer. When I saw this I finally got the impression that we can now start turning this over to the business users. However many of my workflows still require custom code events which is not possible in this environment. Maybe if it had a way to reference external dll methods.

Process Management

They will be providing a new functionality that will allow you to change process instances that are now in flight in Visual Studio. Several of us had reservations about process version controlling to ensure that developers are not making tons of ad-hoc modifications to their process without making changes back to their baseline. Regardless this functionality is absolutely needed. I see this being very valuable for that purpose. The great thing about this one is that you can apply patches before an error were to occur. I still recommend that if you have areas of highly volatile business rules that you break those out into sub-processes and isolate them instead of making changes directly to the instances in production.

Process Portals

I have known about it for some time however I have not had the time to break open my Tech Preview VPC. I did see it flight and it awesome. Now they have a site template with some new webparts, reporting service reports, etc that allow you to create process management dashboards in SharePoint. All tasks for the current user and all users are finally visible. There is a process overview web part and you can see all running instances. The K2 Workspace is great for developers, administrators, etc. but sending the business users to this portal is much better. I believe I heard them say they plan to create some new versions of the K2 Workspace based on what type of person you are (admin, dev, or business) and I believe that is the right direction.

End Point Publishing

This got a couple of us really giddy. Now we can publish SmartObjects and Processes and WCF endpoints which can be looked up in a UDDI catalog. This will enable other platforms like Java to really easily start hooking into K2.

SilverLight Designer

Yes they are rebuilding their Ajax designer in SilverLight and it really slick. It will allow business users to compose workflows in SharePoint without any client on their machine. It can pretty much be hosted anywhere and has an extensible model. I thought it was really cool how they reversed the paradigm for composing the workflow. Instead of activity/event centric it is based on the user. So a project manager needs to do this while a program director needs to do that. It would be cool of the K2 Studio environment could also adopt this paradigm for process design.

K2 Connect

They are now providing the ability to hook in SAP using their SmartObject architecture. It was really impressive to see how through the GUI they could map into the BAPI, select data fields and surface the data up through a SmartObject. They plan to start leveraging this to access other tradition ERP datasources.

Things I still like to see

• Tools to assist with the deployment of environments, notifications, custom reports, roles, etc. between disparate environments. It is not uncommon for developers to not have access to production environments.
  
• Some better approaches to doing migrations. For instance since the migration tool is still beta for a while and clients want to do BlackPearl implementations allow them to create new BlackPearl servers. Then when the migration tool is prime time, then migrate the processes to a different clean BlackPearl server. Then migrate the processes over to the permanent BlackPearl server (as if you are doing disaster recovery).
  

Wrox Book

Yes – there is a K2 Wrox that is going to be written. I am responsible for the SmartObjects, Deployment and InfoPath chapters. My hand was sore after signing all the dang paperwork.

There are still tons of other things that were discussed which I will discuss when I am allowed <g>

First K2 Insider Conference April 7 to 11

I am heading off tomorrow to the first K2 Insider Conference tomorrow morning in Denver. I am frantically trying to get some client work done, then I got TPS reports for several projects and an ice hockey in three hours. Ugh. Several went out skiing this weekend but it was just going to work for me given the amount of work on my plate.

I will be making a presentation on some case studies we have done at RDA and then Gabrielle Malherbe, Colin Murphy and myself will be leading a workshop on SmartObjects. There is actually a blog we wrote together that I still have not had time to go over and get up. In it we discuss and debate the positioning of SmartObjects in the Enterprise Architecture. A conclusion (which I fought against for while) was that SmartObjects have many characteristics of SOA but it is not SOA. Even though SmartObjects allow you to easily (and I mean easily) provision and harvest data into your workflows it still does not replace a data access layer. It is just a piece of it. LINQ, Entity, and .Net Data Services provide a richer object query and object relation mapping tools than what you can get with K2 SmartObjects. K2 SmartObjects have their place and right now I compare it to the Business Data Catalog (BDC) that is provided in MOSS. However my opinion on this may change over the week J

November K2 User Group Presentation

Update 4/16/2009 - Here is the recorded presentation

I will be presenting virtually to the K2.Net User Group Meeting Tuesday, November 13, 11am-1pm central time. The actually presentation will between 11:45-12:45 Central Time.

I plan to demonstrate how to build a simple custom SmartObject Service.

For information on how to attend, please go to the following - http://k2underground.com/forums/thread/19517.aspx