Workflow

Re: Why doesn't pause during duration work in Sharepoint/Workflow Designer?

Lisa Choi — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 04:11:16 GMT

Hello,

No I wouldn't know which timer job it was attached to but I do know that it was directly related to that. We discovered it was just best to rebuild the workflow on the new site. The pain and time to fix the error would of been longer. Have you tried restarting the Timer Services on the server and see if that re-boots it back to normal? Sometimes a simple kick in the "rear" is the best option....lol Oh also check to see if there is something holding it back - McAfee Virus Scan or something in the log files....

Good luck!

Re: Why doesn't pause during duration work in Sharepoint/Workflow Designer?

mobrien118 — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 04:04:56 GMT

That's sort of good to know. I have some extremely complicated workflows that will take weeks to rebuild in a new site. And, as we know, they are nearly impossible to migrate too :-(

Coincidentally, we had the Project Server Synchronization timer job disappear off of the SSP for this site as well. I am not an admin on this server, but I think "the incident" had something to do with a backup/restore and/or a service pack or KB installation. This has been the most frustrating and error ridden project I've ever worked on...ever!

You wouldn't happen to remember, off hand, which timer job is responsible for picking up that pause and resuming it, would you? I can't seem to fins any documentation on the workings of that workflow activity.

Thanks for your response, Lisa!

Re: Why doesn't pause during duration work in Sharepoint/Workflow Designer?

Lisa Choi — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 07:27:28 GMT

Hello,

Yes the workflow finally did get fixed and hurray pause duration does work. A fellow poster assured me that pause duration does work and suggested I look into the Timer Services function. I tested pause duration on another internal portal and what do you know, the freakin thing worked. The short story version of this is that my team had to rebuild another portal and apply all the same functions. It turns out that fixing Timer Services would of been too long and painful, might as well start with a brand new site and work your way back up. Short answer is....look at your Timer Services and look at your activity logs. Somewhere along the path, pause duration was working...something goofy probrably happened to cause it not to work. Timer Services is so critical to making other items on your Sharepoint site work...possibly alerts and other functions are acting out of whack? Could all of this be a coincidence? Hmm...

Hope that helps!

Lisa

been there and now it's soo much better...yes, I believe! ;)

Re: Why doesn't pause during duration work in Sharepoint/Workflow Designer?

mobrien118 — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:08:24 GMT

Hi Lisa,

A google seacrh for "pause for duration permissions" led me to this thread. I'm having the same problem with a workflow attached to aninfopath form... The workflow "pauses", but never continues!

So, I'm just wondering if you ever got this resolved. I've been searching and messing with the server, but haven't been able to figure anything out yet. I'll keep you posted if I do find anything of value.

--mobrien118

Re: Why doesn't pause during duration work in Sharepoint/Workflow Designer?

Lisa Choi — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 03:47:40 GMT

Thank you for your reply back. I've posed the (heavy emphasis on this) concern and question to my team and waiting for their reply back. What I am proposing to do for the client is to migrate over the workflow to the working portal and showcase that piece to them, with a heavy emphasis that this needs to be fixed on the Timer Services in order for all of this to run smoothly. I've documented all the known errors that I've spotted and will show this to my team...being a grunt worker in the field of developing these tools, I think I see alot more than being high up on the plateau? I'll be presenting this to the architect tomorrow and will figure out a realistic timeline to get this fixed (once a project manager,always a project manager).

I don't write code either but our programmer/developer could do that.

I'm in the Pacific timezone...my Live Messenger handle is jungunchoi@hotmail.com It will be nice to chat with you (not pick your brain)

Trust me, I'll be documenting the crap out of all of this workflow issue, you know it'll pop it's ugly head out again if we (team) don't take care of the problem....

Lisa

Re: Why doesn't pause during duration work in Sharepoint/Workflow Designer?

warrtalon — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 03:01:34 GMT

You didn't come across negatively or as spoiled. I just wanted to share how it felt from my point of view without speaking for others necessarily. Your 'client" situation makes sense, and I understand. We in IT always have "clients" whether as consultants or just internal IT - it's really all the same.

I see that you are separated from the permissions that allow access to the sharepoint servers themselves and likely from Central Admin. That's where all the attention needs to be, and if all that stuff is going on, it should be the #1 priority for the administration team or for the architect who runs it all. I say that as an architect for a large sharepoint implementation (as a consultant to a client) who also has an administration team under me with great expertise. I would have my top guy on this problem the moment anything got wierd like you said, and it would be top priority likely.

I hope that someone can help, but I don't think i can due to the fact that it will require a custom coded workflow to solve this, and I don't write code. I could probably fix the Timer Service issue if given the chance, but that doesn't sound possible. If I think of a nifty workaround on the workflow side, I'll let you know. What timezone are you on, and do you have another form of communication you can use for real-time comms? AIM, Skype, Live Messenger? What timezone are you in?

Re: Why doesn't pause during duration work in Sharepoint/Workflow Designer?

Lisa Choi — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 02:54:59 GMT

Dear Clayton,

It's not that I want to take advantage of the good nature of your technical expertise or the InfoPath forum community, I simply was trying to get feedback from others to figure out if there is another solution to the problem. I don't know of any and am not beyond asking for help from others to figure out these issues. I really do appreciate the effort and help that you have offered up. My thought was that this forum would be a place to bounce ideas off with others...not a free services call.

Yes, my team has troubleshooted this issue and we are aware that it may have something to do with the Timer Services issues. Our alerts are being wonky and the portals are just weird in themselves. No, we are not consultants to a company, rather we are the "IT" services to an organization that needs SharePoint services. We maintain our own portals for our company as well as do all the troubleshooting, systems maintenance as well as tools development and deployment. The client is our own internal client...

It's not that I am unwilling to try to fix the root of the problem. One, I really don't know the back end of the servers themselves and I don't have access to them. I was just brought on board less than 2 months ago. I did address looking at the Timer Services to the team, which I suppose they are looking at...sent the email, waiting for a reply...getting annoyed at no answer....

My apologies again for coming across like I want free help.....just wanting to talk with others

Lisa

Re: Why doesn't pause during duration work in Sharepoint/Workflow Designer?

warrtalon — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 02:29:06 GMT

Lisa, hear me out, because I'm struggling with this. I hope you've seen that I have a strong, genuine desire to help anyone without prejudice. I even go beyond what most are willing to do in terms of providing direct, marketable expertise towards resolving issues directly within templates and solutions (that's the point at which payment is typically expected). I haven't really drawn my line, because I'm new to the "giving" side of SharePoint/InfoPath after years of only consuming. However, this situation is giving me pause. Please verify that I have these factoids right:

You and an entire team of people are being paid by a client as IT consultants to deliver some solution or set of solutions within SharePoint that includes InfoPath
Your team has the ability, rights, and responsibility to fix the broken "portal," which means to me that your team is the one who architected it, built it, and maintains it. Is some of that not true? Is that portal a client portal that you were paid to deliver?
You were working on something close to the deadline that I was able to help you figure out
You know exactly what is causing your problem and keeping you from delivering the desired solution
You can't or aren't willing to try and fix the root of the problem, which is the responsibility of your team anyway (maybe?) due to perceived time constraints
You present to the client tomorrow and are asking random strangers to provide a solution to you overnight for free in their free time that can be presented to your client - the client who will pay for your entire team's work that was actually solved by the unpaid stranger

Am I off? I have a hard time helping, and I know that the folks who run this forum are incredibly talented (several MVPs and near-MVPs) - probably well-beyond my own talent. However, they do this for a living and have an entire service that allows customers to pay for them to solve problems through consulting or through development (code or not). The even worse part is this is not an InfoPath issue, but rather a SharePoint admin/architecture issue that is causing an SPD issue, so it's not relevant to this forum at all really.

I'm not saying I could even think up an alternative solution overnight or even in weeks. What I do know is that if you are trying to deliver or present something on that broken portal, you have far more things to worry about than paused workflows. The Timer Service is critical to the health and success of SharePoint as a whole. If it's busted, then the entire list of timer jobs will not run - indexing, alerts, and tons of other jobs. My opinion is that the moment you became aware of that being the root cause, it needed to be addressed with the full attention of everyone even if it meant getting an expert architect online for a fee. That wasn't done, but i still contend that the best way to fix this is to at least LOOK for some simple solutions to fixing the Timer Service, because that would fix a lot of other things while also allowing your pause duration workflow.

You may have just left out the fact that your team already did some basic troubleshooting, but I think that if I had the chance, I could have a decent shot at figuring it out quickly enough for you to present on time. You could concurrently look for alternative workflow solutions, but I imagine it will require custom coding from scratch for the whole workflow.

</soapbox>

Re: Why doesn't pause during duration work in Sharepoint/Workflow Designer?

Lisa Choi — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:30:36 GMT

I did some testing and the pause duration workflow does work on one portal but not the other. Because of this and the lack of time to fix the broken portal, is there another solution that would work instead of using pause duration workflow? I know the issue had to do with the Timer Services on the server. I don't have the time to have my team fix the situation and need to come up with another solution in the meanwhile. We are presenting to the client tomorrow morning.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Lisa

SharePoint enthusiast (want to be but having a love/hate relationship with it)

Re: Why doesn't pause during duration work in Sharepoint/Workflow Designer?

Lisa Choi — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:54:13 GMT

Thank you so much!

Re: Why doesn't pause during duration work in Sharepoint/Workflow Designer?

warrtalon — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:38:40 GMT

I've seen your unique struggles and hope that I can help you keep the faith.

Re: Why doesn't pause during duration work in Sharepoint/Workflow Designer?

Lisa Choi — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:37:18 GMT

Interesting, I recreated a test list on a different portal and got it to work just fine. Doesn't work on the original portal...will have the team look at the server tomorrow and have them reboot if necessary....

Thanks for your insight. I really do want to believe in SharePoint....I do....just so many wrong things have happened. Lol!

Re: Why doesn't pause during duration work in Sharepoint/Workflow Designer?

Lisa Choi — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:25:10 GMT

Ok, I've recreated a simple list with just pause duration and logging on a different list and on a different portal. We've had issues with portals....

It is using an InfoPath form but there is nothing in the form itself to make it get stuck. It's purely on the SharePoint designer side that I'm doing the workflow since out of the box workflow on SP didn't give me much to offer.

Will let you know in a couple of mins if this worked or not. I'm such a skeptical person now...

Re: Why doesn't pause during duration work in Sharepoint/Workflow Designer?

warrtalon — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:53:59 GMT

That is strange. The problem with SPD is you can't give me a "template" to analyze. If this were InfoPath-related, then we could probably work it out. As it stands, all i can tell you is that this function DOES work, so maybe your best bet is to go create another workflow on a different list and see if it works when set to the minimum duration. Use a simple workflow that does nothing except pause and then log a message to the history list when done. Also, be sure the Windows SharePoint Services Timer Service is active. If so, check the Time Job Definitions in Central Admin to see if something is stuck. AFter all is said and done, consider rebooting the SharePoint server (the one with Central Admin) if you can do so without interrupting others.

Re: Why doesn't pause during duration work in Sharepoint/Workflow Designer?

Lisa Choi — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:35:31 GMT

Yes, I added the log to history list action after the pause....ugh

nothing!

When I clcked on In Progress to view Run Activity Report,I get an error saying the report contains no data?!