Today I had a client request to automatically generate a Sequence Number for a document when it gets added to a library. The ID field could be used to serve this function, but they wanted the sequence to start at 1000 instead of 1.

To achieve this, I decided to use a workflow in Designer to prove out the concept. I used a variable to add 1000 to the ID field, and assigned that value to the Sequence Number (SN) field I created. There was a problem, however. Because the property sheet for the document comes up right away when you upload a document, the SN had not been generated yet. When I tried to save the changes to the properties, I got an error because the underlying item had been changed. This was very disappointing.

To work around this, I put a five minute pause into the workflow, right before the SN gets generated. This allows the user to finish filling out the properties, then the SN gets added when the timer expires.

If anyone else knows of another way to handle this, other than code, please let me know.

I recently had a problem with a client where using the Reporting Serices add-in for SharePoint in a forms-based zone was not functioning as expected. We went through all the suggested steps - applying the cumulative hotfix, making the Default zone the FBA zone, and making sure that the indentity of all the relative app pools were domain accounts - but were still getting this error:

An unexpected error occurred while connecting to the report server. Verify that the report server is available and configured for SharePoint integrated mode.

You might also see some more detail about a user (your FBA user) not having sufficient permissions. The Reporting Services web service shouldn't know (or care) who the FBA user is though - that's for SharePoint to deal with.

The reason this was happening is that the web service had anonymous access enabled, thus allowing SharePoint to try to pass it the FBA user's credentials, instead of using the trusted account to authenticate. Disabling anonymous access will fix the problem.