SnipSnip 1.1 released!

It’s been a long time coming, but there is now a new version of SnipSnip available for download. I’ve had a half broken version with new features for the longest time, but I never got around to getting it into a releasable state. The last little while however I’ve been using it a lot more and some of the issues have really been bothering me. I decided to sit down and remove some of the stuff that obviously wasn’t going to work while also fixing some of the small errors that could be sorted out. The result is SnipSnip 1.1.

What’s new? A few things, but these are the biggest changes:

  • One can now zoom and scroll captures at will
  • Clean the background of transparent Aero windows
  • Ellipse drawing tool
  • SnipSnip now checks for updates automatically (can be disabled)
  • Flip and rotate captures

There’s also a slew of bug fixes. Check the change log for more details. Head over to the SnipSnip page to download.

How sloppiness and SPWorkflowTask.AlterTask() could inadvertantly lock your workflow task

The SPWorkflowTask.AlterTask() method is handy dandy. It allows us to alter task details from outside of the workflow itself. I was using it in a couple of custom task forms I had created to update the task based on some user input. It’s pretty simple. You get a reference to the active workflow task item, create a hashtable that you populate with the data you want to change, then use AlterTask() to update the task.

This is pretty much exactly what I was doing, except I threw in an item.Update() after my SPWorkflowTask.AlterTask() call for good measure. I wasn’t sure if the AlterTask() actually did an Update() internally so I figured it couldn’t possibly hurt, right? Continue reading

Solvera LipDub Project

Working for a great company has it’s benefits and sometimes we get to do really fun stuff. Be it working with people we respect, working on products and technologies we love, or doing crazy random things for no other reason than having fun. As a consultant company it’s often hard to meet people that work on different client sites. As a result we have frequent social gatherings and the latest one was quite a special one. Check out the video below the break!

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Speaking at the Prairie Dev Con, in November

Prairie Dev Con logoI will be doing a session on  SharePoint 2010 workflows at the Prairie Dev Con in Winnipeg this fall. The event takes place at the Viscount Gort Hotel on November 21 and 22. This session will feature part of the presentation I did earlier this year, but will focus on and delve deeper into workflows. Be sure to check it out to see how to develop a complete workflow with custom forms using Visual Studio 2010 (without InfoPath). Also make sure you check out their website and get your tickets while the early bird offer is still on. Hope to see you there!

Creating custom content type forms using aspx pages in SharePoint 2007

I’m working on a project where I need to create some custom task forms for a workflow. I’ve been looking into a few different ways of doing it and I ended up deciding on using custom aspx pages to do the job. I figured I should share how to do it although it’s not all that hard.

But hang on… Why aspx pages? Why not InfoPath? You’d think using InfoPath would be a no-brainer, considering creating custom forms is it’s entire purpose in life. Continue reading