SQL Script to switch all currently RO databases to RW mode

May 15, 2018, 5:55 am

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I was doing some testing of K2 databases consolidation process which required me to re-run database consolidation process more than once to re-try it. Unfortunately K2 Database Consolidation Tool leaves all databases in read-only mode if something fails during consolidation process. If you remember K2 used to have 14 separate data bases prior to consolidated DB was introduced (see picture below).

Typing 14 statements manually to bring all these database to read-write mode is a bit time consuming so I came up with the following script:

View the code on Gist.

Essentially it will select all databases currently in RO state and will output bunch of statements to bring all of them to RW state as an output:

Just copy-paste this script output into new query window of SSMS and press F5

It may be useful for you once in a while (and if not for this specific use case, then as an example of generating some repetitive statements which contain select statement results inside).

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SQL script to attach detached non-consolidated K2 DBs

May 16, 2018, 3:47 am

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I keep playing with SQL and non-consolidated K2 DBs and in previous post I covered bringing “these 14” back online, now I realized that other case where SSMS requires way too many click is attaching “these 14” back (let’s say after you rebuild your SQL instance system DBs to change instance collation).

Quick google allowed me to find relevant question on dba.stackexchange.com where I took script which generates CREATE DATABASE FOR ATTACH for all existing user databases. Next having my 14 non consolidated K2 DBs I generated the following script to attach them back in bulk:

View the code on Gist.

You can either use this CREATE DATABASE FOR ATTACH for all existing user databases script while your K2 databases are still attached, of it they are not just replace paths in script listed above and execute modified script to attach them quickly.

Simple walkthrough: Using K2 Database Consolidation Tool

May 18, 2018, 10:26 am

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Purpose of this blog post is to outline K2 databases consolidation process using K2 Database Consolidation Tool.

When you may need it? For older K2 deployments when initial installer used to create 14 separate databases instead of one “K2” database we expect to see with current K2 versions. Such environments even after upgrades to newer versions carry on to have these 14 databases and only starting from K2 4.7 databases consolidation is enforced and you cannot upgrade till you consolidate your databases into one. So you can still see non-consolidated K2 database en environments which run any version of K2 up to 4.6.11 including.

To perform consolidation of these 14 K2 databases into one you need to obtain appropriate version of K2 Database Consolidation Tool from K2 support. Below you can see basic steps you need to perform while performing K2 databases consolidation using this tool.

1) First we need to check collation of your existing K2 databases, this is necessary because consolidation tool won’t handle conversions from one locale to another and consolidation will fail. You can run this script to see collation of your non-consolidated K2 DBs:

View the code on Gist.

As you can see on the screenshot below output of this script shows that my non-consolidated databases have Ukrainian_100_CI_AS collation:

2) Make sure that your target SQL Server service instance has the same collation as your databases either via GUI:

or script:

View the code on Gist.

and copy your non-consolidated databases to the target server which will be hosting consolidated database (unless it is not the same server which was hosting them initially).

2) Obtain K2 Database Consolidation Tool from K2 support, extract it on your SQL server which hosts your K2 databases and launch SourceCode.Database.Consolidator.exe, once you start it you will be presented with the following UI:

3) It will detect your non-consolidated K2 DBs (<No Instance> in the Instance drop down means that you are connecting to default, not named SQL Server instance) and here you need to select your target DB – just select <New Database>, specify “Create Database Name” (I’m using default name used by K2 installer which is K2) and click Create:

4) Once you click Create, database K2 will be created in the same collation as your SQL Server instance (your target DB will contain all the required tables and structure but no data) and Start button become available to you so that you can start consolidation process:

5) Before clicking on Start make sure  your K2 service is stopped. Despite we just created our target “K2” database we still getting warning that all data in target DB will be truncated and we have to click Yes to start consolidation process:

Once you clicked on next you will have to wait for a while till consolidation completes (in the bottom of the tool window in its “status line” you will see current operations which are being performed during databases consolidation process. Time which is necessary to complete this process is heavily depends on your server performance and volume of data in your source databases.

In some scenarios (e.g. source and destination collations have different locale IDs or you moved source databases to another SQL server without re-creating their master key) consolidation process may fail leaving your non-consolidated databases databases in read-only state:

In such scenario you need to review consolidation log to identify and address errors and once done. Switch your source databases back to RW mode (as explained here), delete your target database and start again from step (2). When consolidation completes successfully source non-consolidated databases also stay in read-only mode.

If consolidation completes without errors you will get a message confirming this and also informing you that ReconfigureServer.ps1 script has been created:

You can also click on Log Directory link which will open consolidation log file location – as usual you can open it and make sure than neither ‘Logged Warning’ or ‘Logged Error’ can be found anywhere in this log beyond Legend section in the beginning.

6) In the directory which contains K2 Database Consolidation Tool you will need to take ReconfigureServer.ps1 script and copy it over to your K2 server. This script fires off K2 blackpearl Setup Manager while instructing it to connect to your new consolidated DB:

Here is this script code which you can copy/paste:

View the code on Gist.

Once you run this script on K2 server it will start K2 Setup Manager where you need to go through all pages of “Configure K2 blackpearl” process:

You will see on the database configuration step of the wizard that thanks to PS script we already targeting our new consolidated DB:

Once reconfiguration process is completes (without errors and warnings) you can start testing how your K2 environments behaves after K2 consolidation process.

GA of K2 5.2 – time to try new version

October 17, 2018, 2:11 am

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Today 17.10.2018 K2 5.2 went into GA stage meaning news about release were sent to all clients and partners and starting from now we can download this new and shiny version from K2 portal. So it is a perfect time to do a little review. Without further ado let me start with this.

You can download 5.2 installer from K2 portal. And providing you have test VM with current version of K2, update manager will get you to new version  withing 30 minutes or so. Once installer completes extraction of files you presented with splash screen:

Splash screen provides you with essential information (.NET 4.6.1 requirement, where to run an so on) and allows you to kick off installation process (conservative people like me can still locate Setup.exe and run it from Installation folder).

In case of existing installation detected K2 Update manager detects that and gets you upgraded just in few steps:

In case you run with multiple security labels you will immediately notice improved label selection UI which is no longer looks like something from the past and fully aligned with modern K2 UI design:

Additionally you will notice increased number of available OAuth resource types:

My favorite under the hood improvement, which is really huge thing, is completely rebuilt identity cache and sync architecture which was brought into on-prem product from its cloud version (if I employ Microsoft-speak “battle-tested in the cloud” and so on). At this stage all the internal infrastructure of new Sync Engine is already here in 5.2 RTM, yet it is disabled – stay tuned for official news for when this feature will go live for all customers. At initial stage K2 will work with selected customers to assist them to enable and transition to the new Sync Engine. But like I said, you already can see that underlying infrastructure for New Sync engine is already here in 5.2 release. In case you familiar with back end/underlying tables you can tell that number of Identity tables has increased:

And Identity.Identity table has been expanded too:

Long story short with all these changes and new sync engine enabled your Identity cache sync speed will be greatly improved and, for example, even your URM Get Users SmO call against Azure AD label can be served from cache without doing query to AAD.

There is more improvements and new features and I will try to cover them in greater details a bit later.

Additional resources / next steps:

Download K2 5.2

5.2 Release Notes

5.2 User Guide

5.2 Installation and Configuration Guide aka ICG

K2 5.2 Developer Reference aka DevRef

K2 Five (5.2) Fix Packs

K2 – How to identify process name by process instance ID

October 23, 2018, 12:13 am

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Somehow I kept forgetting this thing frequently enough to expend some effort to write this

At times when you troubleshooting something in K2 you need to identify process having only process instance ID and frequently knowledge of the solutions and workflow is a missing part (developer is away on vacations or , in the worst case scenario, nobody even knows if there was a developer in the first place ). As a sample scenario, you can think of troubleshooting failed process escalation or process instance which stuck in Running state.

Let’s look at this in more details. For failed escalation you will definitely have error in K2 host server log and entry in K2 Server.Async table – that will give you  ProcInstID value, and your next steps are: A) Find out which process this instance belongs to and B) Status of this instance. Finding (B), at least if your process is in error state is easy as it supposed to be listed in  Error Profiles View where you can retry error and also see Process Instance ID and process name.

But in case your instance not listed in Error Profiles View, or let’s say you going step by step before jumping into Error Profiles, then you still have 2 options to get Process Name process instance ID:

(1) Using Workflow Reporting SmartObjects. You can use Process Instance SmartObject (Workflow Reports > Workflow General > Process Instance) to get list of Process Instances – you just feed ProcInstID to it to get back ProcessSetID:

Process Set ID in turn can be feed to Process Overview SmartObject (Workflow Reports > Workflow General > Process Overview) which will give you Process Name:

(2) Querying K2 database (in case you already in SSMS and too lazy to switch over too K2 Server/Tester Tool ). Here is a SQL query you need to run:

View the code on Gist.

Unable to create new/edit existing Oracle Service Service Instance after changing K2 installation path

December 8, 2018, 2:16 pm

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Recently I bumped into a problem which was super obvious in retrospective, yet took me some time to untangle it. K2 environment was upgraded from 4.6.11 to 4.7 and K2 installation path was changed in the process (drive letter). After upgrade was completed without warnings or errors, we did some more testing and found that one of the forms which was using Oracle Service Instance based SmartObject started to throw an error similar to this one: 

Essentially it was very clear from the error message that Oracle Service instance keep looking for related assembly in old installation location (wrong drive letter). We switched to SmartObjects Services Tool only to see that there we are unable to edit or create new service instance of this service type. At this point I looked at old cases mentioning similar error message and surprisingly large amount of them was proposing workarounds and things not quite related with the root cause. We spend some time addressing missing prerequisite for this service type – 64-bit Oracle Data Access Components (ODAC) version 2.121.2.0 or higher, which mentioned as such in 4.7 user guide (_) and checking some related settings and so on.

But I next paid attention to the fact that environment had 2 service type for Oracle one of them was working, while another one does not. I next dropped assembly mentioned in error message in old installation location and restarted K2 service – it then fixed first Oracle service instance, but broken another one – it started to say that assembly SourceCode.SmartObjects.Services.Oracle.dll has been already loaded from another location, and this brought my focus back to the real problem – somehow one of the Oracle service types was not updated by K2 Setup Manager to use new installation path. Probably it was somehow “custom” and somehow was skipped by installer because of that. Anyhow my next step was finding where this path is defined. As soon as I confirmed that I cannot see/edit Service Type definition XML from SmartObjects Services Tool I switched to K2 database to check it there.

Necessary word of warning: Backup your K2 database before attempting any direct manipulations in it, and make sure you understand what you are doing before starting doing that 🙂

Service type definitions live in the follow [SmartBroker].[ServiceType] table, so I located “problematic” service type to check on its XML which is stored in ServiceTypeXML column. Here is the sample query to quickly search for service instance definition based on its Display Name:

Than will return you XML column value, on which you can click to view it as a formatted XML, here is an example of how it looks like:

As you can easily service type definition contains assembly path parameter in its XML. So now it is only a question of updating it with correct value. Here is sample script to do that:

That will iron out problem with misbehaving service type. I don’t think that it can be very frequent problem as normally installer updates all the assembly paths definition with new path. But, especially if you have some custom service type, you may want to scan your service types definitions for any vestiges of old installation path. Here is a sample script which will display all Service Instances definitions which contain old drive letter reference (my example uses “D:\%” as a search criteria):

I hope that this blog post may help someone who may bump into similar error in K2 and if not, then maybe you can make use of SQL script samples which use filtering based on values within XML columns.

First blog post for 2019 + new K2 blog announcement

January 10, 2019, 3:47 am

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I guess I’m a bit late for writing posts of the “looking back at 2018” and “new year resolutions for 2019” type as through the relevant time period I was busy migrating my blog from premium shared hosting provider to cloud hosting. The reason for the move was former provider inflexibility with payment options (I was OK with high price tag but was not OK with their desire of receiving it all upfront). Migration process involved some silly mistakes and forced WordPress internals learning, but I finally managed to resolve all issues and get my blog up and running (now with HTTPS ).

I also keep writing blog posts for StarWind Blog, and recent one was about SharePoint 2019 installation. But something which may qualify for bigger of my NY resolutions for 2019 is a new blog about K2 which I’m going to do completely in Spanish. I don’t plan to put huge amount of content there very fast and probably will be also translating some of my old K2 related posts into Spanish. You can already bookmark new site address – k2bpm.es and stay tuned for new posts which will arrive as soon as I write them

K2 Mobile Applications – Updated landing page

February 1, 2019, 1:26 am

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It used to be somewhat confusing with two mobile apps (K2 Workspace and K2 Mobile) for two platforms (iOS and Android), but recently updated K2 Mobile Applications help landing page makes things clear right off the bat making it easy for you to navigate to the right information:

There is also couple of useful links on the bottom of new landing page, namely Distributing K2 Mobile Application with MDM and K2 Mobile Support Policy:

Really good job on K2 documentation team side I really see that product documentation becomes better and easier to use.

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Unable to add/remove K2 Environment Fields –“You are not authorized to perform the requested operation”

February 3, 2019, 1:43 am

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In certain scenarios (for example, when you changed your K2 administrative accounts) you may see the following error when trying to add or remove Environment Field in Environment Library:

This may happen even for user which has been assigned K2 Administrator role in Setup Manager when custom security was configured on Environment Library and it didn’t include this specific account.

To resolve this (providing you have account with administrative rights) just look into Security settings available under list of variables themselves when you navigate to Environment Library > %Environment Library Name%:

Just add required user assigning him Modify rights to resolve this issue.

Start multiple workflow instances with PowerShell

February 26, 2019, 2:36 am

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You can find sample PowerShell script for starting multiple process instances in K2 Developer Reference, below you can find just slightly modified version which I am normally using. I’ve only added some variables to specify desired number of instances, project and workflow name along with folio value.

View the code on Gist.

How To: Re-configure your K2 environment to use forms authentication

April 11, 2019, 2:23 am

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This blog post is just a short walk-through explaining how to switch your K2 environment from Windows to Forms authentication. Just to provide you an example of when you may want this – you can use this configuration when you want to get password prompt on token expiration while all your forms users working from […]

K2 Setup Manager – MSDTC is not configured correctly

October 19, 2019, 7:15 am

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The other day I’ve been doing installation of K2 4.7 on standalone (i.e. non-joined to domain) Windows Server 2016 machine with SQL Server installed locally on the same box, and bump into MSDT Network Access analysis result failure, receiving error shown below: That’s quite a standard warning which explicitly says you what kind of check […]

K2 Setup Manager: The selected user needs to have Domain Users privileges to proceed

October 27, 2019, 5:55 am

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Once in a while you can bump into a warning from K2 Setup Manager which says: “The selected user needs to have Domain Users privileges to proceed” on K2 Site Application Pool Configuration which looks as shown below: I was not able to confirm what exactly triggers this, but I do know that it happens […]

Getting "The server is not licensed (MachineName: , MachineCode: )." in K2 Designer

December 19, 2019, 6:33 am

≫ Next: Error on K2 service startup – 2010 Type Load Error, Method 'get_DisplayName' in type 'SourceCode.Hosting.Runtime.Group does not have an implementation

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I recently run into interesting issue with K2 4.7 – non working K2 Designer was displaying the following error: The server is not licensed (MachineName: , MachineCode: ). (values for Machine Name and MachineCode are removed from the sample error message text above, but the latter value was system key). Interestingly Licensing section of K2 […]

Error on K2 service startup – 2010 Type Load Error, Method 'get_DisplayName' in type 'SourceCode.Hosting.Runtime.Group does not have an implementation

December 27, 2019, 3:36 am

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This is a bit of a blast from the past type of post, but I would write about this anyway. In 4.6.11 you may observe the following error logged on K2 service startup: “Error”,”System”,”2010″,”TypeLoadError”,”SourceCode.Hosting.Server.Runtime.HostTypeLoader.LoadHostableTypes”,”2010 Type Load Error, Method ‘get_DisplayName’ in type ‘SourceCode.Hosting.Runtime.Group’ from assembly ‘SourceCode.Hosting.Runtime.IdentityService, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=16a2c5aaaa1b130d’ does not have an implementation.” This error […]

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How to identify type of K2 Setup Manager run mode based on installer trace

January 14, 2020, 1:08 am

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When you run current versions of K2 Setup Manager it saves trace file in %temp%\K2 Setup Log directory and you may also find trace files in your K2 installation directory in Setup\Log subfolder. Trace files which you can find there named InstallerTraceDDMMYYY_N.log. Quite often it is necessary to confirm what mode (Install, Upgrade, Configure, Repair) […]

How to identify an empty K2 role

May 4, 2020, 3:30 am

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In some scenarios you may have empty K2 roles with no users added, and in the past it was possible to create new role in K2 Management without adding any users into it or delete all users from the role (this is not the case in current versions of K2). When you have K2 role […]

K2 5.4 Setup Manager – unable to change K2 Service Account

October 20, 2020, 3:19 am

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Although my keep steep drop in amount of K2 posts from my side with more than high probability in the future, I’m keep jotting little things for now. The other day I was a bit perplexed by K2 Platform Classic setup manager which blocked me from adjusting K2 service account like that: What it actually […]

Unable to add/remove K2 Environment Fields –“You are not authorized to perform the requested operation”

February 3, 2019, 1:43 am

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In certain scenarios (for example, when you changed your K2 administrative accounts) you may see the following error when trying to add or remove Environment Field in Environment Library: This may happen even for user which has been assigned K2 Administrator role in Setup Manager when custom security was configured on Environment Library and it […]

Start multiple workflow instances with PowerShell

February 26, 2019, 2:36 am

≫ Next: How To: Re-configure your K2 environment to use forms authentication

≪ Previous: Unable to add/remove K2 Environment Fields –“You are not authorized to perform the requested operation”

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You can find sample PowerShell script for starting multiple process instances in K2 Developer Reference, below you can find just slightly modified version which I am normally using. I’ve only added some variables to specify desired number of instances, project and workflow name along with folio value.