Sharepoint Workflow Issue

Question

Unable to create sharepoint workflow (2013). Please see screenshot below. The SP site is not able to load and getting "Waiting For Workflow" and then it expires,

Action: Send email only

Anyone encounter this?

Please advise.

Answer 1

Hi @Glenn Escarayan
You could check ULS log to get more details for this workflow error.

Or do these troubleshootings:
1.deactivate and re-activate the Workflows feature in Site collection features and check again.

2.Re-publish the workflow and check if the same issue will occur.

3.Strat workflow with other account instead of system account and compare the results. The user who deploys and runs a workflow must be added to the User Profile service. Check the User Profile service application page in Central Administration to confirm that the user you are using to validate workflow installation is in the User Profile service.

4.Workflow get stuck could also be impacted by Timer job, here is an instance for you:
https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/264576/sharepoint-workflow-stuck-takes-ages-to-complete

What's more, you could read this article to do SharePoint 2013 Troubleshooting Workflow Farm:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/51716.sharepoint-20132016-troubleshooting-workflow-farm.aspx

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Answer 2

Hi @Glenn Escarayan
I notice that the workflow named "Test 2010" is OK, is it a SharePoint 2010 workflow? You could try to create another simple SharePoint 2013 workflow to test whether it could run normally. If the result is normal, I would suggest you to check your current workflow again or recreate a new one with the same steps and actions.

If all the SharePoint 2013 workflows are all with problems, then you need to check whether there is something wrong with Workflow Manager application pool, WorkflowServiceBackend Service, Service Bus Gateway and Service Bus Manager Broker services and so on. Here are two similar cases for you:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/cba74c76-7cbc-4d77-850e-4e2e9216706d/sharepoint-2013-workflow-8220something-went-wrong-to-try-again-reload-the-page-and-then-start?forum=sharepointadmin
https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/237356/sharepoint-2013-workflow-something-went-wrong-to-try-again-reload-the-page-an

You could also check whether the SharePoint Content DB storage is full, here is another similar case which includes most solutions you could try:
https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/240553/starting-a-sharepoint-2013-workflow-something-went-wrong-to-try-again-reload

I also find another case which could result in this issue:
When a site collection is deleted, SharePoint signals the Workflow Manager farm to unregister the scopes for that site and all child subsites. As a result, WFM deletes all in-progress workflow instance data related to the site as well as the internal links that make workflow history possible. The site was restored from the site collection recycle bin using Restore-SPSite, but restoring a deleted site does not re-register WFM scopes related to the site. Since the entire site had been deleted, the WFM scopes for all subsites within this site collection were also in an unregistered state.

To resolve this issue, you could delete unregistered scope related to the site and its child subsites. With no scope entry for a given site/subsite, SharePoint will re-create the entry the next time a 2013 workflow is published to that site. For more details, you could refer to:
https://www.c-sharpcorner.com/article/sharepoint-2013-troubleshooting-workflows-failed-to-publish-something-went-wr/

Note: Microsoft is providing this information as a convenience to you. The sites are not controlled by Microsoft. Microsoft cannot make any representations regarding the quality, safety, or suitability of any software or information found there. Please make sure that you completely understand the risk before retrieving any suggestions from the above link.

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Answer 3

Hi Yilu,

Will try those steps and let you know.

Thanks,
GCE

Answer 4

Hi, we are also getting similar issue after Jan 2023 Patching. Environment SP2016.

@Yi Lu_MSFT do we have to install new SharePoint workflow Manager even if we had older workflow manager installed and was working?

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=104867