Sunday, June 21, 2015

Chrome limitation in SharePoint 2013

I heard about so many compliant , when an end user trying to access the SharePoint 2013 intranet site or a developer trying to test their application in the Chrome browser and also many threads on the internet.

SharePoint 2013 has improved  many of its features those can target cross browser capabilities.

The main difference is underlying on the rendering engine in Internet Explorer and Google's Chrome.

When its comes to SharePoint 2013,Microsoft enhance most of its products are connected very well with in the family products.
Example, Microsoft Office,Office Web App, Project Server , MS Dynamic AX, Office 365,Exchange Server and Azure related services. These products were heavily relies on the Active X components.

ActiveX component, I would say its interoperable  component specific to Internet explorer("Microsoft.XMLHTTP").

These specification and rendering engine is entirely different on all browsers other than IE.
To fill these gaps, Plug-In and Adds -on introduced.

So you cannot expect the full pledge service when you rely on the add-on services on your browsers.

Here are some of the limitations when you choose to work on SharePoint 2013 sites other than


  1. Multiple Document upload features
  2. InfoPath Form rendering with slightly difference when you use the Windows and Claim based authentication.
  3. Open in Explorer feature is completely off in Chrome browser as its not understand the installed component on the client machine.
  4. Export to Excel and Open with Access features in SharePoint list.
  5. Copy and paste the excel to data to SharePoint list.



Tuesday, June 02, 2015

Removing multiple version of Workflow

This is simple workaround on removing multiple version of Workflow those associated with item.
Running the multiple versions of the workflow,long running instances of the workflow those are often leads to collapse the SharePoint's workflow  related timer jobs.

You have to follow always the best practices while you are publishing the SPD workflow such as stop / cancel the previous workflow or set no new instances on the previous workflow.

Here is code work around on removing the old instances of workflows from the SharePoint List item.

public void RemovePreviousWFInstances(SPListItem listItem)
        {
            using (var web = listItem.Web)
            {
                web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true; 
                using (var site = web.Site)
                {
                   SPWorkflowManager manager = site.WorkflowManager;
                    foreach (SPWorkflow instance in manager.GetItemWorkflows(listItem))
                    {
                        if (instance.ParentAssociation.Name.Contains("Previous"))
                        {
                            manager.RemoveWorkflowFromListItem(instance);
                        }
                    }
                }
                web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = false;
            }
        }