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I have a workflow (in SP2010) Task Process that I need to be able to cancel. I had a parallel action in the "When the Task Process Is Running" that checked for Item deletion or a field change.

Run in Parallel
-----------------
Wait for deletion of item the task process is running on
...
End Task Process
-----------------
Wait for status to equal "Cancel"
...
End Task Process
----------------

I'm pretty sure this was working at one point, and now suddenly the "Wait for Field" line causes the workflow to lock. More precisely is prevents Tasks from being Approved/Rejected. As soon as someone clicks Approve/Reject on a task the tasks become locked waiting for the workflow to do something, and the workflow doesn't.

The "status" field is used by Infopath as a flag to tell the workflow to cancel. Is there a better way to cancel the workflow from Infopath? Rather then having the user terminate the workflow by hand.

Something of note, and I don't know if this is important or not. The workflow log shows "Waiting for status" but doesn't show any "Waiting for delete.." or similar. Using a "Wait for change in item" doesn't seem to cause a problem nor show up in the logs.

Edit:

Making a new workflow with a new "Approval Process" does NOT have this problem, and works fine. I also tried adding a new "Approval Process" to my workflow and it DOES have this problem. Strange sharepoint bug?

The workflow became "unstuck" on its own sometime last night (week after it was started) and assigned the next task. Approving the next task caused the workflow to become locked again

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  • My possible solution is to add a 3rd button on the task to cancel the approval process. This works, but doesn't feel right. The cancel button should on the form that started the workflow, not on every task. Oh well, its hack at best
    – shimpossible
    Commented Nov 10, 2011 at 12:38

1 Answer 1

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Here is a blog post, which details about the problem of workflows getting locked - http://blogs.code-counsel.net/Wouter/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=118

I think it summarizes to quiesce the workflow that you are running. I have not done that earlier, but i have seen an option in CA to quiesce the farm.

This issue that you have makes sense with quiescing, since you have mentioned that adding a new workflow does not have this problem and a new approval process does have the problem.

Please let me know if this solution has helped you, so that others could follow the same.

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  • If by quiesce you mean to prevent additional workflows from starting, I do not see how that fixes the issue. I'm not changing the workflow while its running. This happens every time this workflow runs.
    – shimpossible
    Commented Nov 10, 2011 at 12:35

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