KB001699

Issue Description

When accessing a K2 component that relies on Silverlight using the Google Chrome browser, you will see a page action notifying you that a plug-in is blocked and the K2 component will not load. This impacts the following components:

• View Flow report
• Workflow Designer (available from K2 Designer in K2 smartforms or in K2 for SharePoint)
• SmartObject Designer (the SmartObject association step, available from K2 Designer)

These three components use Silverlight and therefore will no longer work in Google Chrome once NPAPI support is removed. These components, found in every supported version of K2, only impact designers with the exception of the View Flow report.

Cause

As documented in Google's Chromium Blog (http://blog.chromium.org/2014/11/the-final-countdown-for-npapi.html), Google began phasing out support for NPAPI in January 2015 and they plan to completely end support for NPAPI in September 2015. At this time Chrome will no longer be able to load those plugins. For additional timeline information, also see the Chromium Projects developer guide at http://www.chromium.org/developers/npapi-deprecation. 

Workaround

While Google Chrome continues to allow NPAPI to be re-enabled, you can enable the plugin by browsing to chrome://flags/#enable-npapi in Google Chrome. This workaround will no longer work in Chrome version 45 or when Google removes the option from Chrome, whichever comes first.

Once Chrome has removed NPAPI support completely, the only workaround will be to use another supported browser (including Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer 9 or greater). For more information on the browser versions supported, please see the Support Matrix. 

You may choose to change Chrome's auto-update behavior to ensure that Chrome does not get updated automatically and your K2 design environment continues to work in Chrome. For more information from Google's open-source projects site, please see https://www.chromium.org/administrators/turning-off-auto-updates.