Captaris Workflow – Infopath duplicate field names

I am doing more and more work with using Captaris Workflow, so I am going to start to write a bit about it.

At the moment I have being doing a fairbit of work with InfoPath, SharePoint and Captaris And I want to mention two points when doing this.

1) Always keep a copy of your InfoPath form before assigning it to the workflow. The reason for this is below.

2) When creating the fields in your InfoPath form make sure that you do NOT use the names that Captaris add to the InfoPath data source they are

1. GUID
2. ModelID
3. ProcessID
4. TaskID
5. XMLObjectID
6. ProcessName
7. ProcessView
8. WorkflowNotes
9. Status
10. AutoClose
11. CreateProcessView

Cause if you do your InfoPath form wont load any more and you cant do anything with it. Oh sorry you can delete it, but thats is about it. The error message you recieve is about a duplicate name conflicting with one of the above field names.

So guess what I had to re-do today. It wasnt a mickey mouse form either. Ah well my fault.

Novel Thought, Calculated Fields help

I have bee recently doing some work on calcuclated fields in lists and was getting frustrated by a lack of doco of what functions were available on the web. Well this is probably obvious to all of you but I actually found all the information I needed supplied with the Sharepoint Help feature!!!!!!!

In the Add new Column page I selected the Show more information link in the Optional settings for columns and followed the path to Calculated fields functions. Its quite good.

You can also get it here

http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/assistance/CH011711541033.aspx

Im blind

Sharepoint security

Recently I have been having an issue with the use of Guest access in SharePoint to sites.

Well as everyones knows except me the when you allow a user to have rights to a list or library, the system will automatically  assign them a guest permission on the site. The thing I didnt realise is that guest access does not allow the user to navigate to the site, it simply allows them to access the list in the site so they can view the links bar on the left and the top navigation bar which is managed from the site.

For me this was not so good as it was important for a user to be able to navigate through the sites to get to the library they had access to, so they did not have to remember a discreet URL. I wanted the user to be able to see the site list of what they had access to so they could follow the links like everyone else. 

The way this was done is I created a Site Group called ‘User Guest’ or something like that, I gave this group access only to View Pages in the Site Access. This meant they could navigate to the site but could not access any of the libraries or lists unless it was implicitly set.

A big bonus to this is the leadit navigation tool (which rocks and if you dont have it your in a world of trouble so get it here) is that it checks the subsite security and will only show the links the user has the site access to. So the navigation structure is preserved and the user can clearly see what they can and cant see.

One funny is that even though you may not inherit permission, the user must have access to the top level site as well as the sites that the user will need to traverse through to reach the information they can see. Its easier with inherited permissions but it never works out in the long term as things change.

Hope this makes sense

MSN Betas

I have heaps for some reason, im sure the others do to. If you want one email me.

Use of SharePoint Roll ups.

I havent really written a narrative before but I will now, if nothing else as a way to get my thoughts a little more structured.

There seems to be a proliferation of the concepts of roll ups, as well as many roll up web parts around.

Coras Works

Sharepoint Server 2007

And a myriad of some good ones developed by the usual bunch of SharePoint gurus.

Now my thought is. Are they a good thing? Is it seen as way of helping or hindering the user(that’s what we care about in the end).  I feel unless they are used sparingly and for a clear requirement on almost a one off basis they may be a hindrance to users.

My reasoning is thusly, A good SharePoint architecture should allow the user to easily find and go to a site or area that contains the information that is relevant for them. If a person is after the policy on leave they would visit the HR site and locate it there. Or the deployment schedule for a particular system, they should go to the system site (or another IT Development site).

The point is the structure should be intuitive enough for people to go in as few clicks as possible to the area that would have the information they are after, after a few weeks (days) of usage it should become second nature for a user to assume ALL finance related information (that they are allowed to view) is in a central Finance Site and that’s what they would do.

If roll ups are used excessively they will not be able to see the full picture of the site and will think perhaps they are only restricted to see a small part of a Site and is not able to see all the other information that maybe of interest. One task for SharePoint is for information to be visible and accessible to the users, reducing the need for repetitive phone calls and emails.

I would think that the use of roll ups would create very busy sites and people would tend to rely on them to give them all their information, instead of navigating through a nice easy navigation structure to a logical and well defined site structure.

In conclusion

I think nothing beats a good design and navigation with the users in mind to supply information to people. Using roll ups may complicate the growth and alow people to be more relaxed in defining a clear useable structure and thinking of the context of the information and what it relates to.

 

Im sure and that roll ups do have a very clear niche, I just hope I don’t see to many of them. As it may be a give a way or a quick fix to a poorly designed site.

This make sense? maybe not. 

Tell me your thoughts. 

Speed up VPC’s

I dont like re-directing people but this is a good post about how to push ones VPC in holistic sort of way. Things that seem obvious but it aint until one thinks of them or is told.
http://andrewconnell.com/blog/articles/SqeezePerformanceOutOfVirtualPCs.aspx