Mike Talley

Businesses run on processes. Processes develop out of necessity and become part of a company's culture, or a way... more

Mike Talley

Businesses run on processes. Processes develop out of necessity and become part of a company's culture, or a way of doing things, and define its day-to-day operations. How those processes work determines a company's success. Efficient processes enable the business to thrive. Inefficient processes drag the business down and can ultimately ruin it if the competition is more efficient.

Everything from making phone calls, to sending e-mails and instant messages, to filling out electronic and even paper forms, most actions that employees take are a part of a larger process. Whether that process is bringing a new employee onboard or paying a supplier, from start to finish the process can be described and documented. Often the details of a particular process are known by a handful of people, and sometimes by just a single person. In large processes involving many people, the full details of the entire process may not be known by any one person, which makes it more difficult to document. In fact, determining the exact nature of a process in large organizations is not easy. But writing the process down pays big dividends, because once the process is documented it can be optimized and improved, which helps the business become more efficient. Parts of the process may remain a manual task for an employee, but many parts can be automated, which can take the efficiency of the business to another level.

What if your business has other needs? Maybe efficiency is not the most important issue facing your company today. Maybe you need to streamline operations, improve responsiveness, make better decisions, increase the visibility of process operations, reduce IT costs, minimize risk, or enforce governance. These are all critical aspects of your business that, if resolved, would make your business run more efficiently. You would be meeting your business requirements — the requirements to run your business — more effectively and more efficiently.

The K2 platform enables businesses to be more efficient. This may sound like a bold statement, but think about how your own company operates. You know that there are big efficiencies to be gained if you could identify all the processes in your business and start automating the most critical pieces of those processes. For example, to be able to optimize a process to avoid bottlenecks or to identify how an employee's absence affects the functioning of the business is something that many companies believe is beyond their reach. But through process discovery, automation and the right tools, getting the business to operate more efficiently is no longer beyond the reach of most, if not all, companies.

To begin your look at process management and K2, this chapter covers the following topics:

• Defining workflow

• Exploring the history of K2

• Examining the K2 platform, including the anatomy of blackpearl and its key features

• In terms of workflow, making the build versus buy decision

• Evolving workflow

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Mike Talley

The evolution from traditional application development to workflow and business process management... more

Mike Talley

The evolution from traditional application development to workflow and business process management (BPM) resulted in a much more human-aware application design. Toward the end of this chapter we take a look at the next step in the evolution, setting the stage to get a clear vision of what that application is and how we can refer to it.

In this chapter, we cover the following topics:

• Defining BPM

• Common failures of traditional applications

• Defining a new type of application

• Approaching process design

• Process-driven application examples

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Mike Talley

Identifying and designing process-driven applications is both an art and a science. Many times you will know which... more

Mike Talley

Identifying and designing process-driven applications is both an art and a science. Many times you will know which departments could benefit most when pursuing an incremental adoption of K2 blackpearl. Other times you will need to take a look at your company's organizational entities, how they interact with each other, and which ones are the most process-based already.

Take a minute to think about a process in your company. Keep that process in mind as you read this chapter. When you are finished reading, write down the major pieces of the process and ask yourself some of the questions included at the end of this chapter. Does your process fit some or most of the criteria of a good process for automation?

Also keep in mind that the methodologies and project roles identified in this chapter are meant for an organization that has a relatively mature business process management (BPM) initiative in place. While you can strive toward this "ideal" environment, don't let a few missing pieces discourage you from designing your first process-driven application. Many times the first few applications that you build will be a great learning experience and can help you identify what you realistically need to build your next process-driven application.

This chapter covers the following topics:

• Evaluating potential processes for automation

• Running a process-driven application project, including methodologies, time estimation, and project roles

• Identifying the business requirements of a process

• Evaluating potential benefits of process automation

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Mike Talley

We outlined some of the key benefits of the K2 platform at a high level in Chapter 1. Chapters 2 and 3 discussed... more

Mike Talley

We outlined some of the key benefits of the K2 platform at a high level in Chapter 1. Chapters 2 and 3 discussed how workflow and business process management (BPM) evolve into process-driven applications and designing process-driven applications. Now it’s time to bring these elements together and take a closer look. In this chapter:

• We're going to take a lower-level look at the key benefits of K2 blackpearl to give you the tools you need to take advantage of and extend many features of the platform.

• Then we'll look at what it means to implement a successful process-driven application and how to measure your Return On Investment (ROI).

• Last, we'll give you some ideas of how to expand awareness of process-driven applications throughout your company.

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CHRIS GEIER

Like many people, you probably have questions about planning a solid K2 deployment. You don't want to underplan... more

CHRIS GEIER

Like many people, you probably have questions about planning a solid K2 deployment. You don't want to underplan for a deployment by not taking into account the different moving parts that make up K2. And it's easy to become overwhelmed by looking at the architecture diagrams and listing out all the different services, databases, and integration points. You may wonder how scalable K2 is, can it run on one box, can it scale, and even how does it scale? The answer is always the same: It depends.

While K2 has much in common with many other three-tier applications, it is also different. It is different in that the workload profile can change dramatically from customer to customer and even from process to process. Some customers may use SharePoint, some may not; some may use ASP.NET forms, and some may use InfoPath. Some may use K2 to integrate with many back-end systems; some may not integrate it at all. There are too many variables to accurately predict, with any degree of certainty, a formula for how to scale.

While the architecture of K2 does correlate to a normal three-tier server application, it also differs in that the tiers can vary.

The front tier can be Web forms, InfoPath forms services, SharePoint, or virtually anything you can imagine. The application tier is the K2 server along with its ancillary services, such as SmartObjects interfaces and the Web services for SharePoint. The data layer is the set of K2 SQL Server databases. However K2 can also use various back-end systems as a data layer where the K2 server acts a broker to the other backed systems and their data.

This chapter will not give you a magic formula for how to calculate the exact deployment model and configuration that will work best in your particular situation. Rather it will attempt to give you guidance on particular aspects of your environment to consider, and particular things to plan and watch for. It will also explain the architecture and attempt to point out the most important aspects according to how you plan to use the platform.

There is a significant advantage to understanding the K2 architecture before you start to examine different deployment models. You need to understand the various K2 blackpearl components that are involved in a deployment of K2 before deploying it or updating an existing deployment.

This chapter covers the following topics:

• An overview of the K2 architecture

• Considerations for building a K2 plan

• Guidance on choosing a K2 deployment architecture

• Infrastructure considerations in a K2 environment such as Kerberos, AD, and DNS

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Gabriel Malherbe

Planning an effective approach to a K2 blackpearl solution from an environment perspective is the key to... more

Gabriel Malherbe

Planning an effective approach to a K2 blackpearl solution from an environment perspective is the key to successful delivery. The nature of the solution, size of the audience, and your development approach play a role when selecting the required environments. Capturing non-functional requirements often dictate the project approach. This approach will in return help formulate a strategy that can be applied when setting up an effective environment.

Planning and deploying a successful K2 blackpearl project is not only about having a running server. Methodology, solution footprint and technology dependency will dictate environment requirements.

When picking a strategy, consider some of the following factors:

• The project and development methodology: Are you involved in a large waterfall style development where specification and construction cycles are long and delivery positioned at the end of the project or are you required to deliver short, continually integrated development cycles?

• The infrastructure footprint of the solution: Is your solution a standalone development with minimal dependencies on external infrastructure or is the list of systems, data sources and technologies your solution depends on as long as the list of requirements?

• Continual development and maintenance: After you have delivered the solution are there subsequent phases to the project or will continual support and incremental development be required?

• Corporate policy: Are your developers allowed to wander around productions systems at will, or does a corporate policy or compliance issues require that environments are isolated and governed by strict staging and deployment procedures?

For completeness, this chapter will cover some common environments required for turnkey solution development. We will introduce four environments and cover the use of them in a test-driven development methodology. We will indicate what variations are available for each environment if the methodology is not test driven.

Specifically, this chapter covers the following topics:

• Project methodology and the impact it has on the required methodology and development approach

• Planning and implementing K2 blackpearl environments

• Development best practices including source control, versioning, and release management

• Debugging and monitoring suggestions

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JASON APERGIS

One of the newest and most significant features of the K2 platform is SmartObjects. SmartObjects provide process... more

JASON APERGIS

One of the newest and most significant features of the K2 platform is SmartObjects. SmartObjects provide process designers the ability to provision data from line-of-business (LOB) data sources in a drag-and-drop fashion. Now that data is more accessible, business users can make more informed and better decisions in their workflows. Also, business processes can be built using SmartObjects, which focus on management of data itself. The SmartObject framework is not scoped to K2 blackpearl; SmartObjects can be used with all applications that participate in a process, even disparate ones on different platforms. When using SmartObjects, designers now have the ability to gain access to data that resides in Active Directory, SharePoint, SQL Server, Oracle, SAP, and so on and to build business objects using data harvested from these locations. The SmartObject framework is also extremely flexible, as it provides the ability to create composite views from any LOB application. For instance, a designer may create a composite employee SmartObject that uses data from both Active Directory and a human resources database.

In addition to providing a framework in which data services can be written, K2 blackpearl provides a designer tool that allow for rapid construction of SmartObjects. There are visual design tools for building, deploying, and maintaining SmartObjects. These tools literally enable a designer to author fully functional SmartObjects in minutes. When authoring K2 blackpearl processes, designers have the ability to drag-and-drop data and use it within the process. SmartObjects are designed to be completely decoupled and deployed independently from the K2 process. Since SmartObjects are separate from the process definition, with time a catalog of SmartObjects for the enterprise is created. This catalog of SmartObjects can be reused in future K2 processes or referenced in other LOB applications. This will create continuity between enterprise applications because now business objects are defined outside of the applications that use them.

This chapter:

• Discusses the history of K2 prior to SmartObjects and provides insight as to why SmartObjects have become an indispensible component when writing new workflows

• Discusses the architecture of SmartObjects along with how they may be created, customized, and leveraged within a K2 process.

• Explores the SmartObject API to show you how it can be used in custom code such as an ASP.NET Web page.

• Gives an introduction in writing custom SmartObject Services that can be used to access data in any LOB database.

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Codi Kaji

To ensure success, every process-driven application project should be carefully planned to ensure each effort meets... more

Codi Kaji

To ensure success, every process-driven application project should be carefully planned to ensure each effort meets its objectives. This chapter will walk you through the steps to ensure that you can build successful processes. The purpose of this chapter is to define the main K2 components and how they fit into effective process design. In previous chapters, you learned about how to gather business requirements, including the data requirements. In this chapter, you’ll get back to the business process that you are automating!

This chapter covers the following topics:

• Defining your process, including selection criteria for candidate processes and how to effectively diagram your process

• Process design principles, including happy and alternate paths

• The “Who,” including actors and roles

• The “What,” including activities, events, actions, and outcomes

• The “How,” including Line and Activity Rules

• The “When,” including escalations and notifications

• Advanced process design, including the Spider Workflow approach

It is important to note that we discussed the data requirements with SmartObjects in Chapter 7. In other words, we talked about the business objects before we talked about the process surrounding those entities. A process is meaningless if the right data is not displayed at the right time to the user who needs to make a business decision.

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Sergio Del Piccolo

K2 allows for rapid development of process-driven applications using a multitude of tools. Workflows can... more

Sergio Del Piccolo

K2 allows for rapid development of process-driven applications using a multitude of tools. Workflows can easily be designed using canvases that allow for graphical development through dragging and dropping of activities. These activities are made up of events and can be joined through connectors known as lines. The graphical output is an illustrated process that is easy to understand, hiding any code that may be required.

Because the solution development lifecycle requires a team comprised of different skills, K2 has developed workflow designers that are aimed at different roles within the team. The K2 Designer for Visio is aimed at the business analyst using a tool that they are familiar with, Microsoft Office Visio 2007. The K2 Designer for Visual Studio is aimed at developers who are not intimidated by Microsoft Visual Studio, and similarly the K2 Designer for SharePoint is aimed at SharePoint business users developing in SharePoint. The folks at K2 have also created a fourth designer, the K2 Studio for developers who do not have Microsoft Visual Studio.

This chapter focuses on creating a workflow using the K2 Designer for Visual Studio. The K2 Designer for Visual Studio is the most sophisticated of the workflow designers, providing an extensive feature set. It allows for the creation of simple workflows, SmartObjects, and complex process-driven applications. Understanding how to use the K2 Designer for Visual Studio creates the necessary foundation required for the development of your applications, regardless of the Designer used.

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Jason Apergis

K2 blackpearl provides tools that allow designers the ability to quickly and easily deploy processes into development... more

Jason Apergis

K2 blackpearl provides tools that allow designers the ability to quickly and easily deploy processes into development, staging, and productions environments. These tools to deploy K2 solutions between environments have immensely simplified the deployment process however there are many considerations that must be accounted. There are multiple ways K2 processes and SmartObjects can be deployed. It’s as easy as clicking through a wizard or as advanced as using the K2 API to fully automate the deployment. The K2 deployment platform is built using Microsoft’s MSBuild framework providing flexibility that allows development teams to customize, extend, and automate the deployment of K2.

K2 blackpearl has streamlined tasks for deploying processes and SmartObjects into environments. For example, the K2 platform provides the Environment Library server, which contains environment contextual configurations (such as server connection strings) that can be used into a process definition. When deploying processes, the designer has to choose which environment that will be deployed to and all of the configuration data associated with the selected environment will be deployed with the process. Using the Environment Library server allows designers to easily move processes between development, staging, and production environments because they no longer have to manually go through process and change hardcoded configurations. Think of the K2 Environment Server as a .config file management server however there are no configuration files as all the data is stored in a database.

Additionally, K2 blackpearl provides features that will package processes and SmartObjects for deployment without requiring designers to create custom deployment projects. These deployment packages can be created and deployed using a wizard, the command line, or K2 blackpearl’s API. Plus once the deployment package is created, it can used to deploy to any environment without having to rebuild it. Allowing this level of deployment granularity enables development teams to remain agile in the delivery of solutions. This chapter will discuss the mechanics of how to deploy a K2 process and SmartObjects, using the deployment wizard, command line, and the API. The Environment Library server will be discussed in detail covering how environment variables are defined, how they are used within a K2 process, and how these values are deployed to the K2 blackpearl Workflow server.

This chapter covers the following topics:

• Standard deployment of a K2 blackpearl process and SmartObject

• Deployment considerations for K2 blackpearl solutions

• Environment Libraries, String Tables, and how they should be used in a process

• Deploying K2 blackpearl processes and SmartObjects using a MS Build package.

• Deploying SmartObject Services

• Deploying K2 blackpearl processes and SmartObjects using code

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Chris O’Connor

Jason Apergis

When you approach a K2 solution, it’s important to consider the visual aspects to the process... more

Chris O’Connor

Jason Apergis

When you approach a K2 solution, it’s important to consider the visual aspects to the process and the end-user experience. ASP.NET and InfoPath are the most common user interfaces for K2 processes.

This chapter covers the following topics:

• Client event forms within K2

• InfoPath, ASP.NET, and other forms technologies

• Pros and cons of InfoPath

• Pros and cons of ASP.NET

• Using InfoPath forms

• Working with InfoPath data

• Advanced InfoPath XML considerations

• Modifying the process

• Archiving an InfoPath form

• InfoPath and SmartObject integration

• Good design considerations

• InfoPath process deployment

• Using ASP.NET forms

• Initiating a workflow from code

• Customizing a Web page created via the Forms Generation Client Event

• Displaying a custom Web page for a workflow task form

• Completing an activity from code

• K2 Server management from code—process definitions, versions, and activities

• Viewing processes currently running

• Viewing a worklist for current user

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Igor Macori

Mike Talley

Microsoft characterizes SharePoint as one of the fastest-selling Microsoft products in the history... more

Igor Macori

Mike Talley

Microsoft characterizes SharePoint as one of the fastest-selling Microsoft products in the history of the company. Sometimes it's qualified as the fastest-selling server product. In 2008, sales of licenses for SharePoint hit the magical number of $1 billion per year and joined Windows and Office as a heavyweight champion of software sales.¹ Over 100 million SharePoint licenses have been sold. The bottom line is that SharePoint is popular.

It’s popular because it allows people to easily collaborate. It’s popular because SharePoint, like many Microsoft products, provides the day-to-day functions that many information workers need. It’s popular because it’s relatively inexpensive, especially if you only need the free Windows SharePoint Services (WSS). It’s popular because there’s an entire industry that sells templates, solutions, training, and custom development services on top of SharePoint. It’s popular because it’s powerful.

The K2 blackpearl integration with SharePoint is extensive. If you have only WSS, you get a powerful in-browser interface to build workflows. You also get a mechanism to use data from SharePoint in other applications through SmartObjects. You get list, library, site, and user management. And you get search results that can be used later in the process. K2 blackpoint, which can be thought of as the subset of K2 blackpearl features that integrate with SharePoint, is available if you don’t need the other features of the K2 platform. And you can upgrade from K2 blackpoint to K2 blackpearl if that becomes a requirement for your business.

If you have Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007, you get more functionality and K2 integration, including publishing, records management, InfoPath browser forms plus all of the standard WSS integration.

While SharePoint includes built-in workflow capabilities based on the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and is great for many simple workflows, it does not provide an enterprise-ready platform for automating business processes without a significant amount of development work. Even when adding SharePoint Designer 2007 or Visual Studio into the mix, the workflows that you can create are not readily reusable and cannot provide the extra functionality that an enterprise needs, such as out-of-the-box reporting, dynamic task assignment, and task redirection and delegation. Again, you can accomplish this, but it means more development work. You are also missing security and management building workflows in SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio, but you can accomplish these with more development work. In the end, building with WF requires a significant amount of development work to get to the enterprise-ready state. With K2 blackpearl, the extra, enterprise-class features are already there, and most of your process development is done in a drag-and-drop, visual, and declarative way. If you have to go into code, you will see your WF schedules behind the K2 canvas and can modify, insert, and delete them as you need to.

In this and the next chapter, we will discuss K2 blackpearl features, but as far as the SharePoint integration is concerned, many of the features are also available in K2 blackpoint, which is a less expensive version of the SharePoint-related features of K2 blackpearl. Since it's based on blackpearl, blackpoint processes can be upgraded to blackpearl when the need arises. So keep this in mind as you read this chapter. Anytime we mention K2 blackpearl, the feature is probably in K2 blackpoint as well.

This chapter covers the following topics:

• Key aspects of SharePoint

• The differences between WSS and MOSS

• How K2 integration works

• K2/SharePoint integration features

• The K2 Web Designer for SharePoint

• The K2 Worklist Web part

• K2 SharePoint/SmartObject integration

• Creating a workflow in the K2 Web Designer for SharePoint

• Scenarios enabled by K2 blackpearl

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Igor Macori

Mike Talley

In the previous chapter we took a look at the K2 blackpearl features that integrate with SharePoint... more

Igor Macori

Mike Talley

In the previous chapter we took a look at the K2 blackpearl features that integrate with SharePoint through the browser, such as the administration pages, the K2 Web Designer for SharePoint, the K2 Worklist Web part as well as the SmartObject integration. In this chapter we'll turn our attention to the K2 SharePoint integration at design time through the SharePoint wizards available in the other K2 Designers, including what you can do with them and some tips on getting the most out of the K2 SharePoint process and event wizards. We will also take a more careful consideration of the enterprise scenarios enabled by the K2 integration. This chapter covers the K2 blackpearl features you can use to create advanced workflows for SharePoint, including:

• Process and SharePoint event integration

• Controlling SharePoint content

• Administering SharePoint

• Enterprise Scenario: Web Content Management

• Enterprise Scenario: Using Search Results

• Enterprise Scenario: Creating Content Management Rules Using the Records Center

• Enterprise Scenario: Interacting with Business Applications and External Databases through the Business Data Catalog (BDC)

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Codi Kaji

The K2 blackpearl platform allows for collaborative process modeling by changing the paradigm in which processes... more

Codi Kaji

The K2 blackpearl platform allows for collaborative process modeling by changing the paradigm in which processes are designed. Collaborative modeling allows for a “Big Picture” view of a business’s processes, allowing end users, business analysts, and developers to work together to address a broad range of business challenges.

This chapter will discuss the various K2 design surfaces, as well as how the designers work together effectively based on the skill set and role of the project team member. This chapter also covers the following topics:

• The roles involved when a K2 process is designed

• The designer choices available with K2 blackpearl, including the K2 Designer for Visio, the K2 Web Designer for SharePoint, and the K2 Designer for Visual Studio

• Collaborating on a process using the various K2 design tools

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Eric Schaffer

This chapter will do two things:... more

Eric Schaffer

This chapter will do two things:

• Introduce you to the main components that compose a K2 blackpearl environment

• Guide you in the routine maintenance and administration of these components

Each component serves a specific role and ensuring that these components are operating correctly is an important task for a K2 administrator. This chapter is not an installation guide nor is it a troubleshooting guide. Please refer to the product documentation for installation and troubleshooting information.

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JASON MONTGOMERY

Security is an important element of any system, and K2 blackpearl has a good offering of security features... more

JASON MONTGOMERY

Security is an important element of any system, and K2 blackpearl has a good offering of security features; however, software security features do equate to a secure system. Like all software, the security of K2 blackpearl goes well beyond the administration and management of authentication (who can login) and authorization (what they can access) or the APIs that provide the use and extensibility of security features, which are all certainly important critical core security features. Instead, the security of any individual system requires a holistic, enterprise-wide approach starting with buy-in from the highest levels of management, mandated to all employees through the policies, including the ability to execute and enforce these policies in an effective manner while balancing the business needs with the security controls so that information security doesn’t present unnecessary barriers to actually getting the work done. What a daunting task! This is because information security is not simply an IT function; it is also a business function.

With that said, there are many facets of information security to cover. When you survey K2 blackpearl, including all the interdependent systems, a picture emerges of an overwhelming task of securing it all—a task that’s often ignored due to a lack of knowledge or put off due to time constraints. Since this book is not strictly for developers, this chapter will provide security administration from a business perspective as well as the technical aspects of K2 blackpearl’s security administration for K2administrators and programmers. The first half of this chapter briefly covers a broad spectrum of security principals by providing security awareness. The second half of this chapter delves into the specifics of K2 blackpearl’s security offerings and how to best apply those security principals.

This chapter covers the following topics:

• Defining security

• Planning a secure K2 blackpearl deployment

• Deploying a secure K2 blackpearl installation

• The K2 blackpearl security landscape

• Secure development practices

• Troubleshooting security issues

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Jason Montgomery

No matter how many features a software product has, it always seems to be missing something that would be... more

Jason Montgomery

No matter how many features a software product has, it always seems to be missing something that would be beneficial or useful in certain situations. K2 blackpearl solves this issue in just about every way by providing a high level of extensibility. K2 blackpearl itself is built on a framework of services that allow for powerful customization, including a Provider model for managing authentication (users who can login) and authorization (roles allowing what users can access). These are called security providers and are also known as User Providers since they expose user information from other systems to the K2 platform. At this time, there is only one functional security provider in K2 blackpearl—the Active Directory User and Role Provider. A SQL Server––based security Provider is currently in the works and should be available around the time this book is published. In most situations, the Active Directory Provider will meet the needs of most organizations. However, situations do arise where having the ability to add a prebuilt custom security provider or even create a custom security provider that ties into third-party systems is desirable. K2 blackpearl utilizes the Provider pattern to allow developers to add their own pluggable custom security providers. Additionally, multiple providers can be used in concert and the K2 system will continue to function as expected allowing for a broad range of interoperability with many different types of systems.

This chapter will explore the administration of the K2 security providers for Active Directory and additionally explore the extensible security provider model for building custom providers to handle custom authentication and authorization within the enterprise. Additionally this chapter will touch on Single Sign-On functionality in K2 and the additional security providers that will be provided by K2 connect.

This chapter covers the following topics:

• The Active Directory security provider

• The SQL security provider

• The security provider API

• Single Sign-On (SSO)

• Building a custom Security Provider

• Installing a custom Security Provider

• K2 connect

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Colin Murphy

Disaster recovery is one of the most important aspects of planning your K2 blackpearl deployment. It is one of... more

Colin Murphy

Disaster recovery is one of the most important aspects of planning your K2 blackpearl deployment. It is one of those things that you hopefully will never have to actually utilize but that is absolutely critical to any implementation. As you begin planning for disaster recovery and uptime requirements, high-availability planning may also come into consideration as an attempt to minimize the impact of a server failure on your workflows. While this chapter will primarily focus on disaster recovery, an overview of the high-availability options available with K2 blackpearl will also be provided.

Additionally, K2 blackpearl potentially involves many parts, such as:

• The process servers

• Windows SharePoint Services/Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

• IIS (the K2 Workspace)

• Line-of-business data (such as that which is accessed by SmartObjects)

• Database servers.

While this chapter will provide some guidance on these external systems and some considerations that must be taken into account, it will focus only on the K2 specific pieces of the system and the databases which K2 utilizes.

Disaster recovery planning should be a key consideration within every organization, but it can also be an extremely complex process and quite daunting. K2 blackpearl is also a complex product that potentially involves components installed across multiple servers and that likely interacts with other external systems such as SharePoint or other line-of-business (LOB) systems. This chapter attempts to break down the disaster recovery planning process and also provide step-by-step instructions for each K2 component independent of whether it is installed on a standalone server or within a farm.

This chapter covers the following topics:

• A general overview of disaster recovery planning

• Disaster recovery and K2 blackpearl

• Steps to backup and restore K2 blackpearl components

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Shaun Leisegang

This chapter focuses on logging and system reporting in K2 blackpearl.... more

Shaun Leisegang

This chapter focuses on logging and system reporting in K2 blackpearl.

• Logging is the process of storing information about events that occurred on the K2 blackpearl server.

• System reporting is the process of collecting and analyzing data to measure the performance of the product, process, or activity against expected results. It is a collection of server, network, and application performance metrics.

Logging allows you to record information about process execution in K2 blackpearl. This information is typically used by workflow developers for debugging purposes, and additionally, depending on the type and detail of information contained in the logging information, by experienced system administrators or technical support personnel to diagnose common problems with K2 blackpearl.

System reporting is done in K2 blackpearl via Windows Performance Monitoring (PerfMon). PerfMon is a tool that goes unused far too often, and when it does get used, it is often misinterpreted. It is vital and most valuable tool in determining overall system health and activity, and the most common use of PerfMon is to answer the burning question, “Why is my system running slow?” So, in this chapter the various K2 blackpearl counters for PerfMon will be discussed and how these can be used to monitor the overall system health and activity of K2 blackpearl.

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Sergio Del Piccolo

The K2 Workspace provides an interface for workflow participants to interact with the process-driven applications... more

Sergio Del Piccolo

The K2 Workspace provides an interface for workflow participants to interact with the process-driven applications developed using K2 blackpearl. Participants are presented with a worklist displaying tasks that have been assigned to them, giving them the ability to manage their worklists and complete their tasks.

The K2 Workspace provides powerful reporting features, allowing for the creation of reports through a simple wizard process. Reports created on the K2 Workspace can be published to Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services and be edited using any Report Definition Language (RDL)–compliant tools. Reports created by developers using the Reporting Services Report Designer in Microsoft Visual Studio can be imported and shared with the workflow participants.

The K2 Workspace also provides workflow participants, developers, and administrators with the ability to create and manage notification and custom events informing them of important server events that have been executed as the deployed processes run.

Accordingly, this chapter covers the following topics:

• Using the K2 Workspace to complete the tasks assigned to you

• Viewing and creating reports

• Configuring Notification Events

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ANTHONY PETRO

The book to this point has shown that K2 blackpearl is an incredible platform for modeling business processes... more

ANTHONY PETRO

The book to this point has shown that K2 blackpearl is an incredible platform for modeling business processes and information. Sometimes factors external to the process can affect its performance or logic and processes should be able to adapt to these events both internal and external to the process. Event monitoring allows users to affect change and address issues that affect the process without having to remodel the process. The K2 Event Bus is the event-modeling platform for K2 blackpearl.

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.

This chapter will cover the following topics:

• Key features of K2 Event Bus

• K2 Event Bus Architecture

• Exposing process definitions and data as SmartObjects

• The K2 Event Bus Scheduler

• Configuring the Event Bus

• A walkthrough of using the Event Bus

• Troubleshooting tips and tricks

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Holly Anderson

Mike Talley

The K2 blackpearl platform provides tools and wizards that make building process-driven applications... more

Holly Anderson

Mike Talley

The K2 blackpearl platform provides tools and wizards that make building process-driven applications very simple. The previous chapters in this book covered the basics that are provided to developers and business analysts for building processes on the K2 blackpearl platform. However, there are additional pieces of functionality in K2 blackpearl that provide an additional level of flexibility in building and maintaining complex applications without having to write an extensive amount of code.

This chapter will cover the following topics:

• Advanced Destination Rules

• Advanced actions and outcomes

• Advanced InfoPath capabilities

• Troubleshooting

All of the examples in this chapter will be based on an Application Access Request process (see Figure 22-1).

The Application Access Request process is an InfoPath-based process that allows a user to request access to one or more applications for another employee. When the request is submitted, an e-mail confirmation is sent to the Requestor and the process is then routed to the employee’s manager. After approval from the manager, the request is routed to the appropriate Application Owners, based on the information selected in the InfoPath form. The InfoPath form is deployed to a form library on a SharePoint site. Once approved, an e-mail is sent to the originator letting him/her know that their request has been approved. During the process, both the Manager and any of the Application Owners have the ability to decline the request, which sends an e-mail to the originator. In addition, a Cancel Request option is available during the Manager Approval step. The process also makes use of several SmartObjects to provide information to the process :

• Employee: Accesses employee information from Active Directory using the out-of-the-box Active Directory Service Object.

• Applications: A SmartBox-based SmartObject that holds application information, such as Name and Application Owner.

• ApplicationRequest: A SmartBox-based SmartObject that holds information about the request instance, including the employee ID and the IDs of the applications that are being requested.

• ApplicationAccess: A SmartBox-based SmartObject that holds information about the access levels available for a particular application.

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Holly Anderson

K2 blackpearl provides a bridge connecting people and line-of-business (LOB) systems by utilizing SmartObjects... more

Holly Anderson

K2 blackpearl provides a bridge connecting people and line-of-business (LOB) systems by utilizing SmartObjects. However, even with blackpearl, business users have a difficult time getting to data in complex systems, such as SAP. Users want to read and write SAP data, without involving SAP experts. They want to be able to use SAP data in applications and workflows, view the data in reports, and access it all in a reusable and manageable way. Solutions that provide this type of functionality can be costly and time-consuming. K2 connect for SAP provides the ability to access SAP quickly, giving business users a solution that meets all their needs.

K2 connect for SAP is an add-on component to K2 blackpearl that provides a user-friendly interface for developers to model business entities against an SAP environment without having to write code. The entities can then be surfaced for use within K2 processes, reports, forms, .NET-based applications or Web services and other applications such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. K2 connect decreases development time and improves developer utilization by allowing the SAP experts to work with familiar SAP components such as Business Application Programming Interfaces (BAPIs) and provides .NET developers with objects that they can easily access and use within their applications.

The initial release of K2 connect supports accessing SAP R/3 4.6c environments and higher. In subsequent releases, K2 connect will be extended to support any LOB adapter built on Microsoft’s WCF framework SDK.

This chapter will focus on K2 connect for SAP, specifically covering the following topics:

• The architecture of K2 connect and how it fits in to the K2 blackpearl platform

• Creating Service Objects using K2 connect and the K2 Service Object Designer

• Creating a K2 SmartObject based on a Service Object created with K2 connect

• Advanced topics in K2 connect for SAP

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When we started this book, we wanted to make sure that everyone who read it came away with some good information, not only... more

When we started this book, we wanted to make sure that everyone who read it came away with some good information, not only from the information contained within each chapter but also from the insight each author provides. That in great part explains why the authors were chosen to participate. They come from a variety of fields and have a variety of experiences that should help you take advantage of the K2 platform. To further this idea we have collected various tips, tricks, and "how-to" information from a broader audience, including K2 employees from around the world and community representatives who have discovered some great time-saving techniques. Some of these things you may have seen before on various K2 blogs. Others will be new. We hope you find many of them useful.

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