Inquiry about "Suspended" WF internal Status

Question

Hello,

Could you please advise regarding the following case:

• We have recently upgraded from SP2010 to SP2016.
• I created a new list WF using SPD 2013. The WF is simple where it will pause for some time and will send an email to user after wards but I'm not setting "Out Going Email Settings"
• In SP2010, when we did something similar, we used to see in WF history the error "The e-mail message cannot be sent. Make sure the outgoing e-mail settings for the server are configured correctly" and the WF used to resume to the next step.
• In SP2016, I see the internal status becomes "Suspended" and the error is "An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the workflow instance. Exception details: System.ApplicationException: HTTP 500 {"error":{"code":"-1, System.Configuration.ConfigurationErrorsException","message":{"lang":"en-US","value":"Exception of type 'System.Configuration.ConfigurationErrorsException' was thrown."}}} {"Transfer-Encoding":["chunked"],"X-SharePointHealthScore":["0"],"X-SP-SERVERSTATE":["ReadOnly=0"],"DATASERVICEVERSION":["3.0"],"SPClientServiceRequestDuration":["10"],"SPRequestGuid":[""],"request-id":[""],"X-FRAME-OPTIONS":["SAMEORIGIN"],"MicrosoftSharePointTeamServices":["16.0.0.5044"],"X-Content-Type-Options":["nosniff"],"X-MS-InvokeApp":["1; RequireReadOnly"],"Cache-Control":["max-age=0, private"],"Date":[""],"Server":["Microsoft-IIS\/10.0"],"X-AspNet-Version":["4.0.30319"],"X-Powered-By":["ASP.NET"]} at Microsoft.Activities.Hosting.Runtime.Subroutine.SubroutineChild.Execute(CodeActivityContext context) at System.Activities.CodeActivity.InternalExecute(ActivityInstance instance, ActivityExecutor executor, BookmarkManager bookmarkManager) at System.Activities.Runtime.ActivityExecutor.ExecuteActivityWorkItem.ExecuteBody(ActivityExecutor executor, BookmarkManager bookmarkManager, Location resultLocation)
• After, I set the outgoing settings and resume the WF, the WF completes normally. At the beginning of the issue the internal status was "Started" and I noticed that there is a message when I click on info icon next to internal status "Retrying Last Request. Next Attempt Scheduled in less than one minute"

So my question is: "Is there some configuration to control the number of trials or to prevent the WF from suspending even if outgoing emails are not configured?"

I also have one more question regarding "Suspended" status because while I was searching, I found this link stating that there is a 30 day limit in WF and if users didn't take action it goes to suspended state so could you please confirm this behavior and advise if there is some configuration to change this limit and is this applicable either using SP on-line or on-prem?

Thank you
Regards,
Marwa Mostafa

Answer 1

Hi @Marwa Mostafa ,

Per my test, I created a workflow 2013 without email configuration and I can reproduce your issue:

I will need some time to do research and I will reply you as soon as possible. In addition, is this a new workflow you created in SP2016?

---

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.