When using the K2 Setup Manager for installation / configuration of the K2 blackpearl product you’ll have the option to enable SmartActions and automatically.

One of prerequisites for K2 is a SQL Server instance and in this blog post I am just going to walk you through the process of setting up this important part of your K2 deployment. As with any other product before rushing into installation, you should take your time and do some planning. Good starting point for this is to familiarize yourself with prerequisites and check, and in case installation of K2 smartforms is also on your least, do not fail to check with. As we talking about SQL server part we have special interest in what SQL Server versions are compatible with K2 – and you can find it. If you have a luxury of choice for SQL Server version (as a subscriber maybe) I would always recommend to go for latest version of SQL Server officially supported by K2, and starting from 4.6.8 this is SQL Server 2014 RTM. It is strange to see Azure SQL Server mentioned in K2 compatibility matrix without single one check-mark in respective column. Another thing of note is R2 editions, whenever you see K2 supporting both R2 and non R2 version of Microsoft products you should realize that while both are supported most of the testing being is being done on R2 versions so those are preferable to use.

Why use the latest supported version of SQL? Well this is just a common sense, to have access to the newest feature and avoid pain of forced migration due to end of support cycle for older SQL version whether it is coming from Microsoft side or maybe from K2 or being dictated by your corporate standards. Irrespective of environment type you are going to build I assume that you going for dedicated SQL server machine option. Even for tests you want to have an environment which is close to real world, and thus SQL Server as resource intensive application always being placed on separate machine.

Micro Star Ms-7254 Manual there. With SQL, especially if we talk about non-clustered single server installation you can get away with “spousal” installation (one where you always say YES/NEXT/OK), but there is some caveats related with K2. K2 requires very specific collation and you want to make sure that you selected it for your SQL Server instance during setup process. Basically if you check Technology Requirements section you will be able to find where it is stated that Latin1_General_CI_AS is a required collation. Once again, quoting documentation: Case sensitive databases are NOT supported. The following collation setting is required: Latin1_General_CI_AS Do not fail to interpret this required word correctly: using any other collation for your K2 database effectively means running unsupported configuration. This page does not mention that you have to have this collation on SQL Server instance level, but this is a requirement too, and K2 documentation expected to be updated to reflect this.