Work Management Service provides a functionality to aggregate tasks to a central location on SharePoint Server. Users have a possibility to view and track their to-dos and tasks, which can come from SharePoint lists, Project Server or Microsoft Exchange. This development-oriented webinar will show how to leverage Work Management Service API, to add even more features and fine tuning to the system. On the end, it will be shown how to sync it all with mobile devices. That way, Work Management Service can become a powerful tool for employees to manage and consolidate tasks from various sources, and to have an easy access and overview over their tasks, through their MySite environment and/or mobile devices.

1. Work Management
Service
Using SP2013 as Consolidated Tasks Platform Across the Company
Adis Jugo
Head of Development at deroso Solutions

2. Who the…?
• Born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 40 years ago
• In SP world since 2002, doing nothing else since 2006
• Microsoft MVP for SharePoint Server
• Head of Development at deroso Solutions
• Blogger, speaker (http://adis.jugo.ba)

3. 2/18/2014
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4. Why
• It is challenging for information workers to get a comprehensive view
of their tasks, or to have a central point for managing their work
• Tasks are stored across applications and systems, and even in case
where all tasks are stored within a single system, information can still
be scattered
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5. Work Management Service Application
• New in SharePoint 2013
• Provides functionality to aggregate tasks into central place
• Tasks are accessible through the personal site (My Tasks)
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6. Work Management Service Application
• Tasks can be aggregated from Exchange, Project Server and
SharePoint
• Based on 'Provider model' so that other systems can be eventually
integrated in the future
• Tasks are cached to a users personal site
• Work Management Service is exposed as part of each users My
Site / Newsfeed experience

7. High level picture

8. Features
• Tasks managed from one location (My Tasks in personal page)
• Unified tasks timeline (view, add, close tasks)
• Sync to Outlook (Exchange)
• Categorized/grouped by “locations”
• “Pinning tasks (marking tasks as important)
• Searching tasks

9. Prerequisites
• Work Management Service Application (WMA)
• User Profile Service Application
• Import from AD
• Search Service Application
• necessary for SharePoint 2013 tasks
• Exchange 2013*
• Project Service Application *
• Personal/Newsfeed site (MySites)

10. TASK AGGREGATION IN SP
2013
DEMO 1
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11. Under the hood

12. Service application high level architecture

13. SharePoint 2013: Supported Task Types
• Task Types
• 171 / New tasks from SP 2013 (“TasksWithTimelineAndHistory”)
• 107 / Tasks from SP 2010 (Upgraded Lists)
• 150 / GanttTasks (Upgraded Lists)
• Any Tasks from any list that support Task content type
• Task content type must be set as a default content type

14. Aggregator for SP 2013 as a Task Provider
Get from
cached
locations
Look at the
hint store
Search for
tasks (if search
> 3h ago)
Provider refresh
Refreshing or accessing
MyTasks page triggers
aggregator code
minimum time between provider refreshes: 5 min
Update cached
locations

15. WMA
Properties
Property
Default Value
Description
minimumTimeBetweenProviderRefreshes
minimumTimeBetweenProviderRefreshes
0:05:00
This value specifies the minimum amount of time
between refreshes for a provider for a given user.
There cannot be a refresh of data if this value is
not met, all refresh operations will be null before
that.
minimumTimeBetweenSearchQueries
minimumTimeBetweenSearchQueries
3:00:00
This value specifies the minimum amount of time
between calls to search for a given user. This is
used to discover new providers not yet known to
have tasks for this user.

16. WMA Admin Settings
• Cannot be set in GUI
• Must be set with PowerShell with
• Set-SPWorkManagementServiceApplication

17. Relationship to Search
• Search Crawler locates tasks lists and loads them into the cached
locations for Querying by the WMA Provider
• When a task list is added to the cached locations, new tasks from this
task list will be found during the next Provider refresh
• Most of the times, even new tasks from the list that are not cached
will show up in MyTasks
•
•
•
•
Hints (rely on Event Receivers on Task lists)
Not triggered if user has no permissions on that list
Legacy SharePoint lists will not trigger receiver code (will not end up in hints)
Generally not guaranteed

18. Limitations
• Cross farm aggregation is not supported.
• The My Tasks page will not report and aggregate tasks from another farm
from the same domain or from a different domain, regardless of the existing
trust between the domains and farms.

19. Development model

20. Developing for WMA Service
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21. SSOM/CSOM
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22. UserSettingsManager
Microsoft.Office.Server.WorkManagement
UserOrderedSessionManager
KeywordFilter
UserOrderedSession
LocationOrientedUserOrderedSession
FieldFilter
TaskQuery
CustomAttributeFilter
Task
LastModifiedDateRangeFilter
Location
LocationFilter
RefreshResult
PinnedFilter
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23. TAMPERING WITH THE
TASKS THROUGH SERVER
OBJECT MODEL
DEMO 2
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24. Working with refreshes
DEMO3

25. Client Object Model
• CSOM: Full
• REST: None

26. Building a metro app
DEMO4

27. Thus spoke Microsoft…
Implementation is based on provider model, so that
additional systems maybe integrated to same
architecture in future

28. …no!
<NotSupported />
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29. Tampering with the Provider
Model (18+)
DEMO 5

30. Further reading: Microsoft white paper
My Tasks Aggregation in SharePoint Server and Exchange Task
Integration
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38799

31. adis.jugo.ba
@adisjugo
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