K2 blackpoint and blackpearl 4.5 is released

K2 blackpearl and blackpoint 4.5 was released in early April 2010 and now have a unified codebase and lots of additional features and improvements. I’m excited about the new capabilities and happy I don’t have to tell customers that that functionality doesn’t currently exist in the product but wait for 4.5. No more waiting...

At a high level here are some of the major features that I’ve been waiting for in K2 blackpearl 4.5:

K2 blackpearl 4.5

•  SQL Server Service
•  Data Event Wizard
•  K2 Studio standalone designer
•  Visual Studio 2008 hosted K2 Studio designer
• Inline Functions:  This will require a separate post but a lot of the custom code which I needed to add to my K2 processes can be done using Inline functions.
•  Customizable K2 Client Event Notifications
• Process Portals in SharePoint
•  New K2 SharePoint Silverlight Web Designer
•  Improved Performance of SmartObjects and the K2 Designers
• Installation Configuration Analyzer

K2 blackpoint doesn’t have the same extent of new features because in some respects K2 blackpearl is catching up to K2 blackpoint (see note below). Here are some of the new capabilities in K2 blackpoint 4.5 :

K2 blackpoint 4.5

•  Inline Functions: This will require a separate post but a lot of the custom code which I needed to add to my K2 processes can be done using Inline functions.
• Improved K2 SharePoint Silverlight Web Designer

  

Note: Some of these new features for K2 blackpearl should also clear up a lot of confusion that existed between the differences in K2 blackpearl and the less expensive K2 blackpoint. Although K2 blackpoint was being sold as a subset of K2 blackpoint functionality that wasn’t exactly the case as blackpoint had some capabilities that blackpearl pre 4.5 didn’t have (K2 Studio standalone designer, K2 Silverlight SharePoint Designer, Process Portals) which made for confusing explanations to customers as to the differences in the product features.  Thankfully that’s now changed and hopefully the unified codebase means that updates and potentially new features can be delivered at a faster pace than the last couple years.