Late this morning at SPTechCon, I saw something I never expected to see at a SharePoint conference when SharePoint MVP Robert Bogue asked, in all seriousness, for attendees to help get him in trouble with Microsoft. It was a first for Robert as well, as he freely admitted that this was the "First time I've asked to get in trouble with MS," but that, under the circumstances, he felt he had no choice but to go public with his criticism.
The issue involves event delivery, and Robert stated flatly that "SharePoint has event delivery problems," and asked that attendees "Tell your Microsoft rep that I said this, and ask them to escalate, because they're ignoring me." In brief, the problem is that "Events delivered at unexpected times will cause all future events to be missed." And guess what? This problem exists in both SharePoint 2007 and 2010.
Robert provided some examples of "Bad event delivery patterns" which included: firing events back at yourself, not watching for an event that you're subscribed to, and having multiple events happen at the same time (or "really close together"). Robert explained that "I'm not saying these conditions are frequent, but I'm saying they happen." His final reminder to session attendees on the matter was to "Tell your Microsoft rep I said workflow is evil because, candidly, I'm going to have to get in trouble [to get this fixed]."
The event delivery issue was hardly the sole focus of Robert's session, and I'll be providing a full report on the remainder of the session on How Workflow Works – and How it Breaks later today, but I wanted to do my bit to help fulfill Robert's request and help get him in trouble with Microsoft as soon as possible. Here's hoping that Robert's going public with the event delivery issues will lead to these workflow issues being addressed sooner than later.
Update: The full session report on "How Workflow Works… and How it Breaks" is now available.
Read our complete coverage of SPTechCon San Francisco 2011:
- Document Management from A to Z, with Paul Swider
- The SharePoint Journey, with Tony Lanni
- Jared Spataro's Keynote on 'Your SharePoint Journey: Maximizing Your Investment'
- Robert Bogue Declares 'SharePoint Workflow is Evil' & Asks SPTechCon Attendees to Help Get Him in Trouble with Microsoft
- Robert Bogue Demonstrates 'How Workflow Works… and How it Breaks'
- Owen Allen Makes the Case for 'SharePoint as a Platform for Business Applications'
- Michael Noel on 'Building the Perfect SharePoint 2010 Farm: Real World Best Practices from the Field'
- Joel Oleson's 'SharePoint 2010 Service Architecture Drilldown'
- 'Customizing the Social Aspects of SharePoint' with Michael Doyle
- Scott Jamison on 'Social Computing Best Practices in SharePoint 2010'
