Workflow for SharePoint using Visio - How to overcome validation issues

Today, I'd like to make a bit of a point about the technical content on Office.Microsoft.Com

I was looking for some info on how to circumvent some issues with Workflow design for SharePoint using Visio 2010 and found this article Very useful information from the Office team. Amongst other things presenting a good workaround for using Custom Actions and Conditions.

Here's the copied intro:

"When exporting a SharePoint Workflow from Microsoft Visio Premium 2010 to Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010, the diagram must first be validated. If the workflow diagram is not valid, an Issues window appears which includes a list of issues that must be repaired before the workflow can be exported. For more information about creating and exporting SharePoint workflows in Visio, see Create, import, and export SharePoint workflows in Visio
This topic includes a description, example, and suggested action for each of the workflow validation issues that you can receive in Visio Premium 2010. If you receive notice of an issue during validation, find the issue name in the list below, use the example to help identify where the problem is, and then follow the suggested action to resolve it."

PLease join me for the MBUG Learning Session 26th Oct

Your Invitation to our Second MBUG Learning Session and share in the power of business users discussing Microsoft Office SharePoint as a Business Strategy. Our Lunch Presentation 2.0 will be held at Pitcher Partner's Theatrette, 15 William Street Melbourne Wednesday 26th October. You are invited to join us for our second learning session with a 20 minute challenge to our speakers Knowledge Management and Collaboration @Telstra Sharon Brennan, Manager Collaboration & Knowledge Telstra Enterprise & Government will be discussing the Our Knowledge enterprise collaboration portal. The presentation will focus on the way the knowledge collaboration portal was developed and the learning's along the way. Delivering an Integrated Intranet and Internet Service using SharePoint Brett Coster will present a client case-study. Bendigo Regional Institute of TAFE used SharePoint 2010 as an opportunity to dramatically improve their online presence and deliver a new integrated intranet. A simpler streamlined approach to content management was achieved as well as: Prospective students to see multimedia examples and student testimonials of the experience of students who have studied with Bendigo TAFE. An online course application form which is processed internally by Bendigo TAFE staff using a specific Student Journey Management System using SharePoint 2010 on their intranet. Building Mobile SharePoint applications With so much talk about the cloud, how can you leverage it  to build real world applications, Joshua Haebets will present a live demonstration and show how you can utilise the cloud capabilities of Nintex Live and Nintex Forms to build applications in SharePoint available anywhere and on any device. Q&A Networking Lunch including plenty of chat about SharePoint for Business Intelligence, Business Process and Collaboration. 11 am start followed by Networking Lunch About MBUG All business is looking for efficiency - ways of ensuring continuous improvement and innovation in information management for both employees and customers. Today SharePoint and Office fulfil many of our productivity and innovation needs and provide a platform for collaboration and knowledge management. The new user group with a focus on business issues of SharePoint projects specifically for content publishers, content owners and content creators. MBug will engage with SharePoint power users in organisations, ie knowledge managers, intranet managers, community managers etc..

WHEN 11am- 1pm Oct 26th 2011 & Networking Lunch WHERE Pitcher Partner's Theatrette, Level 19, 15 William Street Melbourne JOIN MBUG at www.mbug.net.au RSVP YES to admin@mbug.net.au @melbbug Directions http://tinyurl.com/3n5h6af

Presenting at SharePoint Saturday Melbourne

Most of the Melbourne crowd would have noticed, but if you haven't. Mossig has been dismantled and split up in two new user groups.

One for a technical audience, MSPUG and the second for a Business Oriented approach is called MBUG. Please have a look and sign up at both groups so we can keep in touch with you.

This month, the regular Wednesday night meeting for MSPUG is being skipped (would normally have been on 26th Oct). Sorry ‘bout that – you can have the night off !Instead, we’re having a FULL DAY of top-quality presentations, both for a technical as well as a business oriented audience. I'll be doing an introduction to Visio 2010 and Visio Services.

This coming Saturday (Oct 22nd) is “SharePoint Saturday Melbourne”.SharePoint Saturday has become an institution around the globe, with the community very strong and active – and always a meeting happened somewhere.In fact – there are meetings this Saturday in far-off places, not just Melbourne – Manila, Belarus (near Russia), and Minnesota.Instead of the normal 1-2 sessions at MSPUG – SharePoint Saturday Melbourne has 15 sessions – and the best bit, is that it’s FREE to attend (including lunch !)

There are 15 sessions – across BUSINESS, DEVELOPMENT and IT PRO tracks – as well as an ASK-THE-EXPERTS panel – and then a prize draw (and THEN SharePint !)Here’s the schedule (PDF) – make sure to have a look and ‘plan your day’.

Many thanks to Brian Farnhill (Canberra) – and our own Elaine van Bergen for organising the speakers, venue, sponsors, catering – and all the other bits that will make it a great day.It’s looking like it will be a great day – so make sure you RSVP – don’t miss out.

There are only a few tickets remaining – so click here to register.

See you there Ed

Get ready for the Australia SharePoint Conference

This great conference will be even better and bigger this year.

Energise your whole SharePoint Team by attending the Australian SharePoint conference. With great content, great speakers, great exhibitions, and great networking, everyone is sure to go away with something worthwhile from the SharePoint event of 2011.

Gain insightful knowledge from SharePoint experts, including SharePoint MVPs, well known and respected local and international SharePoint community representatives, Microsoft attendees and many others. Have your SharePoint questions answered by the best to help maximise your own SharePoint experience.

You will find greatly improved structure around how to find the right sessions for you. All sessions fall into four main tracks, as listed below. They are also categorised by Specialty Area, Audience and Level. Click on the relevant link below to see the related sessions and special activities, or view the full agenda.

Ups and downs with Excel Services

Recently I've been dabbling with using Excel Services and Power Pivot for some dashboard reports in SharePoint 2010. Cool technology, and when you start reading the Excel team blog you can't help but have respect for the detailed, valuable information posted there.
Just after reading, I quote "The thing worth calling out in this blog article is that the error messages in this space have gotten much better." this happened:



and I was just telling the Mossig user group this week how I felt software was starting to work, after all those years.....

Speaking at Tech.Ed and Office Devcon 2010

I'll be presenting next at Tech.Ed, topics are Visio, Visio Services, SharePoint and automated document generation options.

In November we'll have the opportunity to attend the Office Developers Conference in Sydney. This is a FREE event organised by Graham Seach. Do check this unique opportunity out!

At Tech Ed I'm starting as a panel member in the AvePoint Theatre on Tuesday 18.30pm

Adam Clark, Dan Holme, Ed Richard, Ivan Wilson, Roger Carran
Do you have questions about how to implement SharePoint without creating a mess , want to ask how best to use search, when/how to use metadata or any other SharePoint questions? Come along and pose your questions to a Panel of SharePoint experts. All questions welcome !

Wednesday the 25th 3pm, I'm back in the Theatre to chat about generating documents;
Creating Word documents on the fly, using Client or Server, what are the options?

Automating generating business documents - invoices, letters, reports - is something many companies wrestle with. This interactive session will present an overview of all the options available on the Microsoft platform, from Office 2003 XML/XSD based template solutions, via OpenXML, to the highly flexible and scalable Word Services in SharePoint 2010. Ed will prepare demo's for all options, go through the pro's and con's and interactively explore the options of most interest to the audience. Ed will also have some examples of Office 2010 and VSTO Add-ins to demonstrate a more interactive approach a user might take.

An finally this is the abstract for the breakout session at Tech Ed on Thursday in meeting room 8 at 3.30pm:

End to end solution for business process management using out of the box Office and SharePoint 2010 features - “Visio and SharePoint, better together”

This session will start by looking at an operational solution for Business Process Management that is built using Visio, SharePoint 2010 and Silverlight. The client involved during the Early Adaption Program with Microsoft has been featured in a Case study and appeared on stage during the Office 2010 Press Launch. The client has gone on record stating “This is going to change the way we work”. After looking at the actual solution we will go through discussing the different technologies used and how they fit together with a focus on Visio 2010 and the new BPM templates and Visio services in SharePoint 2010. We’ll also look at enterprise taxonomies and document set as featured in SharePoint 2010. We will conclude the session with a discussion of some more advanced technical customization required to make this solution really user friendly with an emphasis on the client side script required to interact with the published diagrams in Visio Services.

SharePoint 2010 certified

It's been quit on this blog, and with good reason, Office and SharePoint 2010 has kept me extremely busy over the past year or so and so has my employer with some exciting SharePoint 2010 projects.
The good news is I learned a lot and should now be in a better position to start sharing.

As MVP's we were given the opportunity to participate in the beta certification exams for SharePoint 2010, the exams will be publically available in July 2010.

I'm proud to say I passed the 70-576, Designing and developing SharePoint 2010 Applications.

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Exam.aspx?ID=70-576&locale=en-us#tab1 for more information.