Work

After 14.5 years, my work at Nintex comes to an end. I’d like to thank Ruan Scott for taking a chance on me all those years ago, and for letting me figure out professional services. I’m grateful for K2, for making such a wonderful product that fitted me so well. If K2 didn’t have a ‘K2 Insider’ program back in the day, I wouldn’t have ended up where I am now (including my private life).

After the release of K2 1370, there have been some small updates to the K2HostServer.config file for your SmartObject Services configuration.

The basics is pretty simple, KB1370 added the ability to change binding and binding configuration on the REST and WCF endpoints separately. Because the binding configuration also defines the authentication mechanism, this means that REST endpoints could use basicHttpBinding with Basic authentication, while the WCF endpoint uses wsHttpBinding with Windows authentication. It also allows us to run either one endpoint on HTTPS while the other is not.

In my previous post on the K2 Services I showed you how to create a static endpoint, this simplifies the URL and allows you to rename or update the SMO without the endpoint changing. The configuration sections shown in those posts are now outdated and won’t work anymore. Since the KB article describing the change doesn’t have all the parameters, this post is also a note-to-self.

Yesteday I tweeted about inline functions and how to get your Icon working properly. Appart from all the info in Johnny’s blogpost, there are some other catches as well. Just because i keep forgetting them, here’s a mental note to myself. It’s a normal class library Start your project with a normal .NET class library. Make sure it’s .NET 3.5. Add references to the following files: SourceCode.Framework SourceCode.Workflow.Functions – this one isn’t always needed.

Don’t worry, I’ve just moved a bit closed to [the] Source[Code Ltd]. I’ve worked at Capgemini and its predecessors for 5 years and it was time to do something different. Capgemini is a wonderful company with lots of opportunities. I’ve also learned a lot there and I’ll always look back at it with good feelings. I’m now working for K2NE GmbH. K2NE is a K2 distributor run by Ruan Scott who, if you have been in contact with K2 in Europe, you’ll probably know.

All the latest updates from K2 have had some “pluming” done for easier access to K2 Services like the Worklist and SmartObjects. The K2 sync services are designed to be used for mobile applications. Just a few months later, K2 has released a iPhone and BlackBerry app to handle your worklist on your phone. The apps are very easy to use and require you to have the K2 Services installed and configured correctly.

With the release of K2 Services in the 1290 release, we’re able to get all sorts of data using RESTful services. These services provide output in 3 formats:

• XML
• ATOM
• JSON

XML is the default output. ATOM is a feed-style output which is in essence XML. And JSON is the one we’re going to use. JSON output can be seen as the serialized output of a JavaScript object. This makes it very easy to use in JavaScript and especially jQuery.

Since the coming of the K2 SmartObject Service in KB1230 , people might have noticed the smartobjectVersion parameter in the managedEndpoints definition. Since SmartObjects have been around, they always had a version. The version number starts at 0 (zero) and increases by 1 (one) when the SmartObject is deployed.

We’re going to use LINQ2SQL in a project. Don’t ask why we’re not doing Entity Framework. When you start out with LINQ2SQL, you’ll google bing on “LINQ2SQL”. This, if you feel lucky, ends up in this page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb425822.aspx The page is long and old. The read, you’ll just have to cope with. That it is old is sometimes annoying because it’s outdated. What I couldn’t really find was the DataShape class on msdn.

Recently in one of our projects, we had to do some performance optimizations that required us to look a bit closer at the resources our application used. In general, you should always dispose an object that’s implementing the IDisposable interface.

K2’s client API’s use a connection to the K2 server which needs to be closed and disposed after you’re done using them. In C# you can use the using-statement to dispose your objects when you’re done with it. The using-statement only works on objects that inherits from IDisposable.
Here are some examples of how to correctly use the using-statement when using K2 API’s.

Just a quick post to let you know that the KB001200 that i posted about, is now available! Customers that already have a K2 blackpearl/blackpoint license can download this update from their customer portal. There’s a PDF up that shows all the features (and know issues). And if you want to upgrade, check this PDF.