Can I change the name of the Sharepoint workflow? - sharepoint

I need to change the name of a Sharepoint designer workflow.
There is a simple direct way I can edit it via SPD right clicking the workflow name. However often the simple, apparently straight forward things that cause unforeseen
issues.
Will this affect the functionality of the workflow or application?
Thanks!

In addition to breaking all or most existing hyperlinks to that workflow (such as initiation forms, etc.) and the weirdnesses already pointed out, renaming the workflow can negatively affect the running instances of the workflow.
(Sorry, I can't be more specific; I just know that it's not recommended unless necessary. :-/)

You can also rename the workflow by:
Open the site with the workflow in SPD
Open the workflow in SPD
Click the "< Back" button
Change the name of the workflow
Click Finish to save
AFAIK, renaming the workflow (the way I specified above) will not cause issues.

Related

Link to start my workflow doesn't appear on my list

I have already create my workflow on SharePoint designer and publish it to my SharePoint library so the Column which has the workflow name was added but the link to start my workflow(has the name of my first step) doesn't appear.
You question is a bit vague but the column in the list simply shows the status of the workflow. To kick off the workflow manually, you need to go to the library and select the item you want to kick the workflow off for. In the ribbon, there is an option to go to workflow settings and in that page you will have the option to start the workflow. If you have correctly built the workflow this should run it. You left important information out of your request such as what version of SharePoint, what triggers your workflow, etc.. so this is the best I can do with that. If that does not solve the issue, I would suggest providing more information. Not many people will take any time to do guess work.

SharePoint: Issues with Orphans when Retracting MasterPage Feature Solution

When I deactivate a feature, or even just after removing a Solution package, I can still choose to select the Master Page which belonged to the feature I removed. This is a problem for me.
The only way to get rid of the hanging reference is to open SharePoint Designer and to browse to the sites _catalog directory then remove the .master files from the masterpages directory.
Is there a way to cause different uninstall behavior which would remove the hanging reference? If so how?
Thank you,
Yes deactivating the Master Page feature will not remove the master page from the Site you need to do it manually or using some feature receiver code that hooks the deactivating event.
My MOSS is a bit rusty, but can't you write some code in the
feature_deactivated event?
Do a manual remove of the master page there?

SharePoint site security: how can I programmatically monitor changes?

I have a case where if a SharePoint site owner decides to break permissions inheritance and directly manage site membership, I'd also like to correspondingly modify view permissions on items in a specific list in the top-level site.
How can I best catch those changes so I know when to apply the appropriate changes to the list items?
I'd like to have some C# code be notified when a site's permissions are changed so I can programmatically modify the appropriate list item permissions.
The best way to do this (unfortunately) is to periodically query all of the sites and check to see if inheritance is disabled. I had a similar problem and used powershell scripting to create a report on site security. If you haven't used Powershell before, don't be intimidated. The syntax is VERY similar to C#.
You can use SharePoint auditing to monitor permission changes. It will track changes down to item level. The downside is that you have to turn this feature on and it will hurt performance somewhat.
As for notification, I don't think auditing tells you about changes. I'm pretty sure you would need to poll the audit log.
There's heaps of information about auditing in this article on MSDN.
Another approach which I think might do a very good job of this is to use the SharePoint ChangeLog. Bascially, this is used by SharePoint during indexing, with the log telling the gatherer exactly what has changed, and what should be indexed during an incremental crawl.
When you have a permission change, then this should be picked up during an incremental crawl. The ChangeLog has specific parameters that can be passed to identify changes to permissions. Take a look here at the SPChangeQuery Class:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spchangequery.aspx
Specifically you can look for ChangeTypes:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spchangetype.aspx
Including:
AssignmentAdd
AssignmentDelete
MemberAdd
MemberDelete
...and more

How to force SharePoint tasks to be editable by "Assigned To" only?

We are using the default Task list from a Team Site and would like to only allow those that the Task is "Assigned To" to edit the tasks. How do you go about enforcing this?
When we tried the "Advanced Settings", we found that "Only their own" meant only those tasks created by the current user.
It looks like you need to create an event handler that updates the permission on the Task everytime the assigned user is changed.
Quite a few people have had this problem in the past.
Check out this site for an example of the problems people have had. That said it should work out-of-the-box if you copy content when setting up the Task List.
Looks like, an event handler is the way to go. I found this page in some of my searching and it explains a lot of the problems related to this issue:
Email Notifications and Alerts - Sharepoint Tasks List
Unfortunately, the client wants no custom code and wanted SP Designer workflows and browser based customizations only...

Simple approve/reject form for SharePoint workflow?

I'm currently creating (in Visual Studio) a simple approval workflow within SharePoint so that I can execute some custom code once the user has approved an item. However, it seems that when I don't specify an approval form to use, SharePoint just selects a default one with a "Complete Task" button, but no "Reject" button.
Is there some sort of default approve/reject form I can reference in my code to give users both choices, instead of writing my own page or copy/pasting from the web?
P.S. I'd like to stay away from InfoPath. This is a really simple workflow that shouldn't take much time, and I feel like going the InfoPath route would take much more time than it's worth.
As far as I know, there is no such built-in form. The choices for your own approval form are InfoPath or a custom ASPX. From personal experience using either approach requires considerably more effort to develop than it really should but if InfoPath is available, use it because in my opinion it is quite a lot quicker and I believe has the added advantage that the task can be edited in Outlook (2007).

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