Thursday 18 October 2012

Fix for VS build error: The "FindRibbons" task could not be loaded

I opened an Outlook customisation/plug-in project to do some modifications today and on building received the following delightful error message:

The "FindRibbons" task could not be loaded from the assembly Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.BuildTasks, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a.  Confirm that the <UsingTask> declaration is correct, that the assembly and all its dependencies are available, and that the task contains a public class that implements Microsoft.Build.Framework.ITask

Wow, highlight of my week!

It looks like the issue is related to installing VS2012 side by side with VS2010, it updates the dlls relating to MSBuild, but not the references held in the standard configuration file. The Microsoft forums (via Google) found me my answer in a reply by 'sriram_electric' (thank you!):

For those who encounter this problem, goto C:\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\OfficeTools and open the Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.targets file.
Replace all 10.0.0.0 with 11.0.0.0

In my case I had to go to Program Files (x86) as I'm running a 64bit OS, but other than that, and a quick restart of VS, the problem was resolved.

If this doesn't work for you, there are other suggested solutions given in the thread above.

- rob

Tuesday 2 October 2012

Upgrading SharePoint 2007 workflows to SharePoint 2010

As part of an ongoing migration project I'm looking at shifting a bunch of sequential and state machine workflows written for SharePoint 2007 (in VS2008) into SharePoint 2010 (which uses VS2010). The business logic behind them is sound enough and I'm on a relatively tight time-scale, so it's not feasible to carry out a review of these processes at the same time (otherwise I'd jump at the chance to LEAN them up, whilst they are relatively sound in respect of their reflection of current business practice, I wouldn't claim that the business practices they support are ideally optimised!)

There's a good blog post on how to do it here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bethmassi/archive/2010/01/15/migrating-a-2007-workflow-to-visual-studio-sharepoint-2010.aspx

To go with this I'll also need to update the associated Infopath 2007 forms to 2010, again, someone else has done the hard work of working out how, here:

http://www.tcscblog.com/2011/09/05/upgrade-infopath-2007-to-2010/

I'll be reporting back soon once I've verified that both these approaches actually work!

- rob