tea time with meowkins

Fixing Nintex Custom Action Errors

I couldn't get a workflow with my custom action to save or publish. I kept getting an error message along the lines of "the first activity's type could not be found in the master activity collection". Nintex gave me a workaround, but then whenever I tried to edit that workflow, my custom action would appear as an error icon, an exclamation point in a bubble. Then I realized that I was missing a comma in the strong name of my custom workflow activity in the .nwa file. So I fixed that, and that fixed everything – I was able to save, publish, and edit the action without errors.

Now, I didn't tell you what the workaround I refered to was, and I think it might help you if you encounter Nintex custom action problems. Originally, when my custom action workflow wouldn't even save or publish, Nintex told me to put a "log in the history list" action right before my custom action. My custom action was originally the only action in the workflow, because I was testing it. Once I put the "log in the history list" action in, then I started getting useful error messages that helped me realize I had a comma missing in my .nwa file.

Thanks to Nintex Support for these answers!

Installing Nintex Custom Action Visual Studio Project Template

To load the visual studio template for the Nintex custom action sdk in visual studio 2008, go to the Nintex sdk support folder (Program Files\Nintex\Nintex Workflow 2007 SDK\Support), and copy the Nintex2007ActionProjectTemplateVS2008.zip into your VisualStudio project templates directory for Visual C# (Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual C#). After that, when you open Visual Studio 2008, you should see the Nintex project under Visual C# projects.

Thanks to NIntex Support for this answer.

How to Add DLLs to a WSP SharePoint Solution

This is probably well documented somewhere, but I couldn't find it within 10 minutes, so I decided to blog it.

If you have a sharepoint wsp, and you want it to deploy additional dlls to a site collection's bin directory when it is deployed, then you can add a line to your cab.ddf and your manifest.xml files to make this happen. In the cab.ddf, you can add a line like

pathToDll\TheDll.dll TheDll.dll

This will put the dll in your wsp cab file. Then in your manifest.xml file, add a new assembly entry in assemblies like

<Assembly DeploymentTarget="WebApplication" Location="TheDll.dll" />

Just to clarify, I'll put examples of each file.

 

---cab.ddf---

; This is the file that you pass to makecab utility, as in "makecab /f cab.ddf"

.OPTION EXPLICIT ; Generate errors

.Set CabinetNameTemplate=SPInstaller.wsp

.Set DiskDirectoryTemplate=CDRom ; all cabinets go in a single directory

.Set CompressionType=MSZIP ; all files compressed in cabinet files

.Set UniqueFiles="ON"

.Set Cabinet=on

.Set DiskDirectory1=Package

 

Solution\manifest.xml manifest.xml

TEMPLATE\FEATURES\MyFeature\feature.xml MyFeature\feature.xml

TEMPLATE\FEATURES\MyFeature\elements.xml MyFeature\elements.xml

 

TEMPLATE\FEATURES\MyFeature\dwp\MyWebPart.webpart FEATURES\ArrowWebParts\dwp\MyWebPart.webpart

 

; this is the important part for this article

; both of the dlls are stuffed into the wsp

bin\Release\MyFeature.dll MyFeature.dll

bin\Release\TheDll.dll TheDll.dll

 

 

----manifest.xml---

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<Solution SolutionId="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"

xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/" >

<FeatureManifests>

<FeatureManifest Location="MyFeature\feature.xml"/>

</FeatureManifests>

<TemplateFiles>

<TemplateFile Location="FEATURES\MyFeature\dwp\MyWebPart.webpart"/>

</TemplateFiles>

<Assemblies>

<!-- choose DeploymentTarget="WebApplication" -->

<Assembly DeploymentTarget="WebApplication" Location="MyFeature.dll">

<SafeControls>

<SafeControl Assembly="MyFeature" Namespace="MyWebParts" TypeName="*" Safe="True"/>

</SafeControls>

</Assembly>

<!-- The other dll is added with another assembly entry -->

<Assembly DeploymentTarget="WebApplication" Location="TheDll.dll" />

</Assemblies>

<CodeAccessSecurity>

<PolicyItem>

<PermissionSet class="NamedPermissionSet" version="1" Description="Permissions for WRWebParts">

<IPermission class="AspNetHostingPermission" version="1" Level="Minimal" />

<IPermission class="SecurityPermission" version="1" Flags="Execution" />

<IPermission class="WebPartPermission" version="1" Connections="True" />

<IPermission class="System.Security.Permissions.FileIOPermission, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" version="1" Unrestricted="true" />

</PermissionSet>

<Assemblies>

<Assembly Name="ArrowWebParts"/>

</Assemblies>

</PolicyItem>

</CodeAccessSecurity>

</Solution>