Intermittent Workflow failures – ‘The workflow failed to start due to an internal error’

Tue, 03 Oct 2017 14:15:16 Z

I just got through working a pretty nasty workflow issue that had nothing to go on with verbose ULS logging. Our issue was that even the most basic workflow’s were failing on a brand new custom list, with the first item created. After the first item was created the workflow would work fine for X amount of time. This issue was ugly, and intermittent, and it probably would have helped if I read this first - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2001370

We found a way to reproduce the error with the following:

1.) Create a new list

2.) Create a new workflow with SharePoint Designer

a.) Step 1: Email user X

3.) Create a new list item

4.) Start the workflow

5.) Watch the failure

Note: Every other attempt after this work would fine (restarting the workflow)

Like I said – the ULS logs were clean, tracking the correlation ID we came up with nothing. Right when we took a break to review the final 3 sets of logs, my friend Wes had attempted a fix he used in the past with another workflow problem.

Disabling the OffWfCommon feature.

disable-spfeature -identity "OFFWfCommon" –url http://yoursitehere/sites/site

enable-spfeature –identify “OffWfCommon” –url http://yoursitehere/sites/site

After doing this the workflow consistently worked - but had me questions as to why, so I did some checking and I have found this to be a fix for other similar workflow issues such as a modified “Workflow Task” content type version that contains this error:

The requested workflow task content type was not found on the SPWeb

If you have a modified "Workflow Task" version greater then 0 and are seeing this same issue, the steps above may be relevant. I would always recommend testing this in a test environment fully before doing it. Here is some sample PowerShell code to help find versions that are not 0. Again, to be used in a test environment.

$site = get-spsite http://yoursitehere/sites/site
$site = $site.RootWeb
foreach ($sites in $site)
{
   foreach ($ctype in $site.ContentTypes)
{
       if ($ctype.name -eq "workflow Task" -and $ctype.version -gt "0")
           {

$ctype.Scope,$ctype.name,$ctype.version }
}

}

Please only use these steps if you are experience the exact scenarios listed above, and I hope this helps you!

SkyNorth

Intermittent Workflow failures – ‘The workflow failed to start due to an internal error’