Thursday, September 4, 2008

blackpearl 0807 Build in Beta

Big news, the 0807 build is now been released as a public beta and can be tested if you so choose. It is available in the K2 Portal. Obviously do not install on a production environment but if you have a test area and want to provide some feedback, please do by opening a ticket (select K2 blackpearl – Beta as the system). They indicated the beta cycle will be about two or three weeks.

Here is the summary from the release notes:

  • Enhanced Active Directory Service Object
  • K2 Visual Studio stability
    • References
    • Source Control (support for TFS/VSS)
    • Memory management enhancements
  • Workspace
    • Enhanced paging and filtering
    • Multi-domain support
    • SmartObjects
    • Out-of-memory issue fixes
    • Deployment fixes on associations
    • Run-time performance fixes
    • More granular selection of workflow reporting SmartObjects on process deployment
  • Out of Office functionality
  • Workflow server – worklist "no data" issue fixes
  • K2 blackpearl Designer for Visual Studio 2005
    • Minor Wizards Sweep
    • Memory management enhancements
  • Migration for K2.net 2003 to blackpearl
    • Migration Tools – (SERVER SIDE) this is a separate utility that will be released based on the K2 blackpearl 0807 code base targeted for the week following K2 blackpearl 0807 RTM. This tool is used to migrate an existing K2.net 2003 databases/server to a new K2 blackpearl databases/server. All the details for this process, including prerequisites, are included in the migration tools documents. The latest version is available under Beta components on the customer portal. The Migration Tool is currently NOT compatible with K2 blackpearl 0807, but will be shortly.
    • 2003 Interop – (CLIENT SIDE) this is the ability to open a k2.net 2003 project (kpr) in K2 blackpearl Designer for Visual Studio and deploy that project to K2 blackpearl server. The "interop" code only happens on the client side. Once Finish is clicked on the old K2.net 2003 template, K2 takes all the code that would have been generated in 2003 and uses that in a native K2 blackpearl activity. Server side it is just executing .net code – same as if you used the migration tools above. Interop also provides the ability to build "hybrid‟ processes which include a mixture of K2 blackpearl wizards and K2.net 2003 templates in the same process. The 2003 Interop functionality is available in this release of K2 blackpearl 0807.

As well, patches associated to the 0803 build have been incorporated into the 0807 build.

I also scanned through the list of things that were fixed; there are a ton of them. There were a couple of issues that were resolved that were of personal interest to me:

  • Fixed the no users or groups in a Role error.
  • You can now change the license key using the K2 workspace instead of having to rerun the configuration wizard.
  • Roles can now be used with Mail Events!
  • Escalations and working hour calculations are now working.
  • Several little design time InfoPath integration issues.
  • Lag time when working with custom code events when making modifications the first time.
  • Extender projects will be properly checked into VSS.
  • When modifying an IP form though VS studio sometimes the message stating that the form has been successfully updated would never appear, subsequently locking VS has been fixed.

Fixed the issue with using the process instance data fields (ID and StartDate) with SmartObject event.

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