SharepointFrancois http://sharepointfrancois.posterous.com Ex-Domino consultant went to the Microsoft Sharepoint some years ago, and rumble his thoughts and findings posterous.com Mon, 24 Sep 2012 08:38:00 -0700 How create HTML emails in #Nintex Workflow actions http://sharepointfrancois.posterous.com/how-create-format-html-emails-in-nintex-workf http://sharepointfrancois.posterous.com/how-create-format-html-emails-in-nintex-workf

I will not repeat enough, when it comes to workflow design Nintex workflow is brilliant and save a lots of hassle.   

lThis said not everything in this tool is that easy to achieve, today I am going to mention a basic workflow action that everyone will use for sure in any workflow: the “Send notification” action"

2012-09-24_180105

This action allows you to send an e-mail, a Lync message or even SMS to a user to inform them in the middle of a workflow.

The problem

“Send notification” comes with its own Rich Text editor to format the text and add reference of an item into the subject and body of the message. But very quickly you should realise that the editor has some limitations. In my experience I found it a bit buggy;  for instance : type some text, format it in blue, add field reference to se the values, then save the action and come back to the editor only to find that the 1 carriage return has expanded to 10 and the font you thought was the same in the whole email has change to another in the middle of the body content.

I actually believe that this is not really the problem with the editor itself but just a standard HTML issue: if you check the source of that rich text editor, you will see some characters and font styling that have been added which makes debugging quite hard.

How I do it

Ok, so this is my tip for dealing with HTML email:

1-     Forget about the Rich text editor

2-      Prepare your HTML body away from the workflow action  

3-      When ready, paste it into the editor

 

Show me

Here is, in pictures, how I now do my email body content. My method may not be the best one and took a bit of time for the initial setup of the first email body, but the next ones can just be derived from it and then speed up the tasks. Also you will see that every time  you are requested to change a character in an email, it’s a “piece of cake”.

1-      Open NotePad (or already into an HTML editor such as a SharePoint Designer HTML file, myself I prefer to use NotePad++ as it formats HTML best)

2-      Start your email body with the labels and values you intend to display, leave the reference as a placeholder for now

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3-      Capture the item values or variables that you need to need to show

In the Nintex “send notification” editor, remove all your Rich Text content and only add the single reference that you need, for instance if I want to display the "Title" field value:

Image

4-      Copy the HTML of that reference  

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5-      paste it into the HTML file

2image

6-      Start formatting some HTML around the item value

3image

7- repeat step 3 to 6 until your HTML is complete
8- paste the HTML into the HTML editor of the Nintex Rich Text editor to obtain an email looking as:
1image
9- Make sure you SAVE your HTML code into a file for re-usability.

Conclusion
Each time you need to edit a comma on your rich text email you do so in the HTML and paste it again in the editor. This way you won't have strange behaviour in the editor.
Again: this is my method and may not be everyone's choice, but since I had a workflow with around 6 different email templates this way was the only way I found to make sure that each email is similar except for a couple of fields, otherwise using the Rich Text editor in the Workflow Action (notification or Flexi-Task) didn't prove to be formatted the same as another one.

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Wed, 29 Aug 2012 03:06:00 -0700 Note to myself about the "Benign OWSTimer unhandled exception popup" http://sharepointfrancois.posterous.com/note-to-myself-about-the-benign-owstimer-unha http://sharepointfrancois.posterous.com/note-to-myself-about-the-benign-owstimer-unha
Media_httpblogsmsdnco_ijbbl

I must google that every year because it escapes my brain or I never believe such a simple error message doesn't get fixed by a service pack on a server so here is the simple answer : don't worry!

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Thu, 09 Aug 2012 02:23:00 -0700 Clever idea : Approve or reject tasks via email WITHOUT Nintex http://sharepointfrancois.posterous.com/clever-idea-approve-or-reject-tasks-via-email http://sharepointfrancois.posterous.com/clever-idea-approve-or-reject-tasks-via-email
Check out this website I found at gallery.technet.microsoft.com

I have to say when it comes to responding a workflow task while being mobile I think of advising my clients to buy Nintex Workflow for their Sharepoint farm as the design and maintenance of those workflows is much, much cost effective in the long term. But this post got me thinking, specially when you have an IT environment locked down where you cannot add third party tools.
I have not implemented it myself yet, but will do in a few weeks.

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Thu, 26 Jul 2012 08:05:00 -0700 Note to self: hide "add document" and "add item" from Sharepoint site in 2 seconds http://sharepointfrancois.posterous.com/note-to-self-hide-add-document-and-add-item-f http://sharepointfrancois.posterous.com/note-to-self-hide-add-document-and-add-item-f

Add this to your custom site CSS :

<style type="text/css">
#WebPartWPQ2 .ms-addnew
{
display:none;
}
</style>

Hideme

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Fri, 30 Mar 2012 09:12:12 -0700 Back to posting and the importance of PAUSE in Sharepoint Workflow http://sharepointfrancois.posterous.com/117231266 http://sharepointfrancois.posterous.com/117231266
The importance of PAUSE in Workflow

I have not been blog-ing anything for a while because since moving into our new house there is always something to do than sitting on computer between working hours. Now that we are all settled and I have a proper study (instead of the kitchen table) I have some catch-up to do with a few notes that I need to post.

Here is a short one regarding timing in workflow execution.
Last week I wrote a very-very simple workflow for my team which updated values of an item after this item was modified by the end user. There is nothing easier than this in Sharepoint Designer (2007 AND 2010 indeed).
All was fine in my very-very simple tests since this was really a no brainer, however a few users complained that they kept receiving the "conflict error" message. 
Eventually I realised that some -if not most- users would edit the items in a datasheet view and come back to the same row WITHIN 5 seconds of having updating it, therefore the SPD workflow was still running when they came back to the item, and while the user was exiting the datasheet row of the item Sharepoint had already saved it via workflow, ending up into a save conflict. I have to say that I never planned for users to be so fast in Sharepoint, we are usually used to wait for page to load and therefore forget that Datasheet mode is way faster.

After much workaround playing I remembered that SPD allows us to add a PAUSE within the workflow, and so I did, mark a 5 minutes pause before updating the fields, and it all sorted the conflict message the end user were receiving.
Pause_workflow

So let's remember to slow down even in a workflow sometimes, to quote this Nigerian proverb that a friend reminded me this morning : "Going slow does not prevent arriving.", as long as my item gets updated its value within the hour users are happy.

 

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Sun, 08 Jan 2012 02:37:00 -0800 Force Sharepoint to open full site when viewed from a mobile device http://sharepointfrancois.posterous.com/force-sharepoint-to-open-full-site-when-viewe http://sharepointfrancois.posterous.com/force-sharepoint-to-open-full-site-when-viewe

What sounded really cool when first launch may turn to be not so great in Sharepoint : opening a page with a mobile / smartphone.

By default Sharepoint 2010 detects that you are using a mobile device and will redirect your page to the mobile version of that same page (/_layouts/mobile/xxx.aspx or old /_layouts/m/xxx in 2007).

to force your site to open the full (desktop) version, follow this blog post and either edit one of the 3 settings or all did the trick for me: 

http://blogs.pointbridge.com/Blogs/broweleit_seth/Pages/Post.aspx?_ID=14#EntryTabs

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Wed, 30 Nov 2011 04:00:00 -0800 Make a Sharepoint publishing site NOT convert to mobile format http://sharepointfrancois.posterous.com/make-a-sharepoint-publishing-site-not-convert http://sharepointfrancois.posterous.com/make-a-sharepoint-publishing-site-not-convert

It has been like months that I wanted to look at this common issue : when you open a Sharepoint publishing site from a mobile device, it recognises the device is mobile and forces to open the mobile version, but prompts fo ra login, not great for anonymous users !

thanks to Glyn Clough's I now have an explanation of the why (cf. feature in his reverse engineering tests) and thanks to Randy Drisgill I manage to force mobile users to open the full desktop site, which looks much better on an iPhone anyway.

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