Workflow admin pages not displaying correctly

I came across this bug the other day and it has been confirmed by EPiServer as a bug which will be fixed in the next version of EPiServer (0045591: Faulty path to CSS and JS files in Admin/Workflow.aspx).

Issue Description
When working in any of the workflow admin or edit screens, styles sheets, JavaScript files and images are broken.

Reproducing the Issue
The issue occurs when you install the edit and admin modes in a sub-directory in the site. E.g. installing edit mode to "/secure/edit" and admin to "/secure/admin".

With EPiServer Manager 1.3 [login required] you are forced to install edit and admin modes to a directory other than the default. If you choose a structure where edit and admin are not in the website root, referenced resources break.

Fixing the Issue
There are two solutions to this problem:

1. Move the edit and admin modes back to the website root. Move the edit and admin directories from the current location to the website root, or create virtual directory mappings, then update the web.config to reflect the new locations (EPsAdminDir and EPsEditDir). Make sure you also update the authentication sections to reflect the new paths also.
   
2. If you must have the modes in a sub-directory then you can also edit the aspx and ascx html directly (Note that these changes will probably be overwritten with an EPiServer upgrade). Update the relative paths in the html to reflect your site setup. Some of the items you will need to edit are (there may be others):
   • admin\Workflow.aspx
   • admin\WorkflowItem.aspx
   • Util\plugins\WorkflowLogView.ascx
   • Util\plugins\StartWorkflow.ascx
   • Util\plugins\ApprovalTask.ascx

Group notifications in workflow

So you've setup EPiServer workflow and it's all working well, except you can't get email notifications working when using groups in your workflow, why? Well, it's because EPiServer workflow doesn't send notifications to groups, and I'm not sure why not.

This is a feature I have wanted for quite a while now, in fact since my first EPiServer installation. I sent the usual request to EPiServer and it's on the feature request list, but I can't see them implementing this feature as they are moving to Windows WF sometime soon.

Anyway, I have created an HttpModule that enables this functionality. It doesn't require any changes to your workflow, and basically enables the email notifications for groups in a workflow. The module hooks up to the task changed event so when a new group task is created in a workflow, my module then sends the email notification to ALL users in the group (the same email that individuals get). It then stores a flag in the task state to stop it sending the email multiple times.

It currently only works for EPiServer groups, but I imagine it could be extended to work with LDAP and Local groups also (I'll be looking into this myself soon).

If your interested then leave a comment. If I get enough interest I'll see if my employer will let me release this code and I'll post again where it can be obtained from.