No improvements since the Beta! Not all lists support the new AJAX-Dialogs. The page-management (for multi-paged workspaces) is still the same as in 2007. Even some old (SP 2007) graphics appear. The handling is that awful, too. So the whole “area” of meeting-workspaces leaves with an “nothing happened here”-impression.

Additionally the meeting-workspace ribbon in Outlook 2010 is gone! You can get it back, but its not that preset as in 2007. This was a really nice feature in 2007. Outlook combined with meeting workspaces.

When taking all this together I’m really disappointed.
It comes to my mind that this whole “meeting-workspace-flow” will soon be removed from SharePoint/Outlook – No real improvements in SharePoint 2010 (haven’t tested building site-definitions from meeting-workspaces but I guess its still as hard as in 2007), ribbon in Office 2010 is gone per default and somewhat hidden.

Disguise

Unfortunately the list where the pages reside is hidden to the UI. So the user has no option to check-in the created page. The only way to access the list is to retrieve the id of the “pages-list” (e.g. via SharePoint Manager). Now you can pass it to the ManageCheckedOutFiles.aspx inside the _layouts-folder. Alternatively you can connect via SharePoint Designer and uncheck the “hide in browser”-option.

Your url looks like this: http://myserver/myweb/_layouts/ManageCheckedOutFiles.aspx?List=%7B6F145CFF%2D8779%2D4D38%2D8B11%2D6B37EBA0A76C%7D

You are now able to “overtake” the checked-out page for yourself for further editing. But your odyssey is not yet over!

If you want to check-in the document you get an error. It’s simply not possible! What helps is:

1. Copy the affected page with SharePoint-Designer
   
2. Paste it into the “pages-list”
3. Delete the old checked-out page
4. Rename the pasted page to the old page name
5. Now your page is fully visible!

Prepare for the future

Because the pages-list does not have any views defined its hard to help users. If you have the list-id of this list you can use every management-page to customize this list (e.g. _layouts/listedit.aspx?List=%7B6F145CFF%2D8779%2D4D38%2D8B11%2D6B37EBA0A76C%7D).

Conclusion

I believe this is a bug. Perhaps there will be a fix. But don’t rely on it … What is really annoying is the fact that this list is a “special list” and you cannot add views to it. So if you ever get a page that does not show: use your SharePoint tools!-)

Update

The customer had a lot of workspaces where this has happened. This bug is really annoying! I have colored (yes that nice orange) the important part to fix this problem.