K2’s 4.5 RC is here.

Nearly every SharePoint blog is reporting on the release date of SharePoint 2010. You might have not noticed that K2 has released the RC version of the all important 4.5 :)
The RC version is available via the K2 Portal site under the beta download section. This also means it’s only available for the current partners, customers and insiders.

Here are the main enhancements (copied from the release notes):

1. New support for:
• Windows Server 2008, including R2
• SQL Server 2008
• Visual Studio 2008
2. Non- AD Installation
3. SSL Support
4. Inline Functions
5. Reports
• New filters and parameters
• Using SmartObject direct execution functionality
6. Performance enhancements to SmartObjects and the K2 Workflow Server
7. In MOSS/WSS K2 configuration Features are deployed as solutions
8. K2 Designer for SharePoint enhancements include:
• Inline Functions
• SmartObject Filters
• Custom Work Item Notification
• Process Data Fields
• New Wizards
9. Internationalization of the codebase
10. Numerous documentation updates
11. Inclusion of all Updates

For more info, here are some links:
K2 Underground 4.5 RC Forum

Registration form for What’s new to K2 4.5

Check out the K2 Event Calendar for other webinars and events.

Jey’s report on the release!

PeteStilGoe.com’s post on 4.5

More URL’s coming…

K2’s 4.5 Release – Inline Functions

Last October I had the privilege to visit the K2 Insiders conference. We all got to see a preview of K2’s new 4.5 release. Now (finally!) a targeted beta is available for selected partners, customers and insiders. This blog post will focus on Inline functions, a new feature of the 4.5 release which will be available for K2 blackpoint 4.5 and K2 blackpearl 4.5. The new release also features improvements to the designers, as you can read in Jey’s blogpost.

Why are inline functions so important?

To explain why inline functions are so important for K2, it is needed to provide some background. Way back before the South African development team started working on K2 blackpearl, a vision was created on how to design processes from a business perspective. The current K2 architecture has a lot of features that can be mapped to that vision. An example of this is SmartObjects. The vision shows that (enterprise) data should not be included/part of the process and should be referred from within the process. SmartObjects do just that, making live a lot easier when working with the K2 platform.

Another big part of the vision is to allow you to design processes without the need to write code. A lot of processes can be implemented without code, but I’ve had lots of occasions where I still needed to write small pieces of code. Within the new K2 designer for SharePoint and K2 studio, you’re unable to write code and you’re stuck going back to Visual Studio. This isn’t how K2’s vision was created and so a solution was needed to reduce the use of code and allow you to call (simple) functions.

What are inline functions?

Every wizard within K2 uses input fields where you can drag and drop items from the Object Browser to the input fields. Inline functions allow you to call simple functions inside those input fields. The functions are categorized in groups, so all the Date and Time functions are together and all the Text manipulation functions are together. A complete list of inline functions will be listed in the product documentation which will also be up on the knowledge base site. For now, you can check this blog post.

So, why is this so good?  Well, as stated in the previous paragraph, this will allow you to do more with the designers that do not support the use of code.

How do they work?

This youtube video will hopefully explain how you use inline functions while designing a process.

From a technical perspective, inline functions are executed within the workflow server.

[UPDATE] I forgot to share the video for the public, it should be better now :-)

But, the function I need isn’t there!

Ok, K2 can’t provide you with every function thinkable on the planet, but they always provide you with ways to extend the K2 platform. This is also the case with inline function! In the end, it all comes down to a simple .NET assembly with some class and method attributes. The developer reference will have an article/how-to on this.

Conclusion

I hope this blog post makes you understand how valuable inline functions can be when designing a process. For myself, it’s another way of doing things and allows me to create processes more easy and (in a lot of occasions) without code!

Other info from K2 Conference

At the K2 conference, we also got information on what K2 will do with SharePoint 2010. As you can see in this post, K2 is working hard to enhance the new functionality of the Office 2010 platform. Personally, i really like the integration with the office applications itself as lots of clients actually don’t want to leave outlook.

Apart from this new functionality, K2 will also support the current functionality in SP2010, which we saw a demo of at the conference. This makes K2 the only workflow engine i know that is able to work with SP2003, SP2007 and SP2010. To make it even more cool, you can combine those in one single workflow!