Sharepoint 2010 Workflow can no longer be published on Sharepoint 2013 for our Online site

Copper Contributor

Dear all, 

 

 we run a SharePoint Online site, where we have a number of workflows (2010) running mainly to generate documents etc in our automated workflows. All has been working fine, till today, when we had some modifications we wanted to execute on some of the 2010 workflows. We are using Sharepoint designer 2013. When saving the workflow, there are no issues, but when we try to publish we get an error (see attached) [Unexpected error on server associating the workflow]

 

Skärmklipp 2019-03-11 10.37.18.png

Right now, we´re at a standstill, and I can not find any real relevant information online on this. Some "older" stuff on temporary files etc have been reviewed, but without success. 

 

Pretty desperate now to get some help - Everything is much appreciated. 

45 Replies

My team/organization is in the same boat as you...we just discovered this issue yesterday. This morning, we had a crucial business demonstration for a solution that leverages SPD2010 workflows due to the limitations of creating Document Sets within SPD2013. Luckily for us...we did not edit the previously published workflow to create Document Sets...no there was no issue with republishing. However, many other workflows for the same solution had to be re-written using SPD2013...took my team member literally all of yesterday and into the hours of early today to get the solution to a place where we could demonstrate functionality. 

 

I've alerted my organizations regarding the issue at hand...hoping people are not foolish enough to go and edit their existing/published workflows in SPD2010.

Another problem with the publishing workflow to Content Type is that after the error during publishing the Workflow Settings page of the Content Type also returns an error.

E.g. attached

 

@SlavaGorbunovIt's pretty abysmal to see that:

1. It's taking Microsoft TWO WEEKS to resolve this issue, even though they already have the fix after one (which in of itself is too long).

2. Microsoft are still only treating this as a "business day" priority - no updates to the record over the weekend, not important enough for 24x7 support?

 

I'm presuming that it didn't take them two weeks to break it in the first place, and it was their own change which caused it (which clearly means they have inadequate testing in place), and also ... if their own changed caused it, then why did they have no backout plan to roll back their change?

 

So much for agile.

@DenisCheong 

Agree, this has been extremely poorly managed, and, especially as some workflow functionality just does not operate on the 2013 platform. This has definately been an event that has had tremendous impact on our business, and we´re looking at alternative ways forward, as a 2 week outtage with Little/no information is just not acceptable. 

OK, the problem is still here.

 

This is unbelievable!

@Dahai FangThe link that I posted above is the only place I have found where the issue and resolution details are publicly available (and it is live updated each day).  Current status (unchanged since Saturday):

 

######################################## Mar 18, 2019 05:27 PM UTC ########################################
Title: Unable to edit existing workflows or create new workflows

User Impact: Users are unable to edit workflows or create new workflows in SharePoint 2010 using Designer and other protocols.

More info: Users may receive the error: "Unexpected error on server associating the workflow," and "Errors were found when compiling the workflow. The Workflow files were saved but cannot run."

As a result of this problem, you may be unable to execute the following tasks:
- Activating features that contain out-of-the-box or custom 2010 workflows
- Provisioning out-of-the-box or custom site templates that contain 2010 workflows

Additionally, attempting to edit existing workflows may cause those workflows to become dissociated with their SharePoint list. We've developed a fix for this issue and are preparing to apply it across the affected environment. Affected customers are encouraged to refrain from attempting to edit existing workflows until our fix is deployed.

Current status: We successfully deployed the fix to a test environment and have validated that our solution is effective. We're proceeding with deployment to the affected environment and are on track to complete this process by Saturday, March 23, 2019.

Scope of impact: Impact is specific to SharePoint 2010 workflows. Any user attempting to edit existing workflows or create new workflows may be affected by this event.

Estimated time to resolve: Based on current deployment progress, we expect this problem to be resolved by Saturday, March 23, 2019.

Next update by: Wednesday, March 20, 2019, at 8:00 PM UTC

 

Latest update from Microsoft overnight:

"Current status: The deployment of the fix is approximately 17 percent complete. We'll continue to monitor the environment as the deployment progresses to ensure that it completes as expected."

I don't know whether this means that it's been deployed to 17% of the sites that they host, but that sounds plausible - meaning that the fix is gradually going live.

It's still not working on our site, but I would recommend that you build a test and see if you are lucky enough to have it working in yours. Create a new SharePoint 2010 workflow against a list, leave it blank and try to publish it to see if it works. If it does work, please post back here as this is the only live thread about the issue that I'm aware of.

@DenisCheong 

 

it´s still not functional on my end. Same errors as before.  :\

Neither me .. but I guess we're almost there - only a couple of days before we've been promised a complete fix will be deployed.

They are now only doing status updates every two days (wtf?), so I don't think we'll get an update tomorrow morning - it won't be until Saturday my time (UTC+11) that they post the next update.

@DenisCheong 

 

i'll post an update here the minute our workflows can be deployed.. 

@DenisCheong 

 

Was thrilled to see this blog.  We are having the same issue and as of 1:00 PM 3/21/19 - it has not been corrected.  I'll keep you posted

@DenisCheong 

 

Incredible...my eyes may be deceiving me but I believe the fix has been deployed to my tenant/environment. I was able to edit and publish a SPD2010 workflow!

@Chih-Ang LinThat's great to hear ... it still doesn't work for us :(

@Dahai Fang 

 

we´ve managed to publish our workflow, and are now conducting functionality tests Before Rolling them out again. Man, this was one for the books.. 

@DenisCheong I was able to create and publish a SP 2010 workflow.

WOO HOO!  We are finally up and running with 2010 workflows

@CindiCostello can you please tell us what you have done? tnk!

Me too! It was very hard to believe after such a LONG outage - two and a half weeks - which Microsoft is now calling an "event", but my SharePoint 2010 workflows are now publishing and look to be working!