Copy SharePoint Designer workflow 2010

I think of SharePoint designer workflow as more of a end user tool rather then a developer tool, for something a bit more helpful for developers look at K2 or Nintex.  Thou if you need to update a production SharePoint designer workflow here are the steps that would recommend to making the changes off line on a development environment and deploying to production or test.

1. Do a Database content migration of the  site collection that contain your workflow to you dev environment. Doing this will ensure all of the GUID's in the background are the exact same a production.
2. Update your workflow and associated infopath form (if any) in Dev
3. Now, before moving  to your test or prod environment I would highly recommend backing up you SharePoint area that we are updating as a just in case precaution.
4. Publish your infopath form to production site.
5. Open dev SharePoint and prod SharePoint in SharePoint designer and copy your workflows  .XOML and .XOML.RULES  files from dev to prod.
6. Close and reopen the prod SharePoint designer. This forces the designer to pick up the new changes. I find with out this step SharePoint designer shows the old workflow.
7. Open the workflow and validate that there are no missing action data.
8. Publish the workflow 

Hey presto,

WSP Deployment stuck in "Deploying" state

While updating a wsp package in  noticed the package was stuck in "deploying" state for a few hours. Think this was a little to long i ran the follow command:

 stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs

Its now as happy as Larry

Lightswitch and Left Outer Join

                

Ever needed to do a left outer join in a lightswitch App using linq? Yes, well its pretty simple. Just add  .DefaultIfEmpty() to any join object that requires the left outer.



query = from pp in query
   from pbl in pp.ProjectBusinessLines.DefaultIfEmpty()
   from s in pbl.ProjectBusinessLineServices.DefaultIfEmpty()
   where pp.ProjectSummary.Contains(KeyWordSearch)
   || pp.CompanyName.Contains(KeyWordSearch)
   || pp.ProjectName.Contains(KeyWordSearch)
   || pbl.OurRole.Contains(KeyWordSearch)
   || pp.Location.Contains(KeyWordSearch)
   || s.Service.ServiceName.Contains(KeyWordSearch)  
   select pp;

Very Sleepy SharePoint Workflow Pauses

Ahh, the dreaded sleepy 5 minute SharePoint workflow action pause that takes days even weeks to complete. Classic symptom of this problem in the workflow history logs reveals a quite unhelpfully  message such as 

[Workflow Name]failed to run

The one helpful thing the error in the workflow history logs does give is the time of the error. Using this error time I would suggest to go though the SharePoint event logs of each server and find out which server servers that this error occurs on. In my case this was occurring only on a front end server that we had set up to to only serve search index requests. it appeared that every workflow that tried to run on this server in OWSTimer was basically spewing out a error message then  putting the putting the workflow back to sleep. 

The errors it spews out are:

Workflow Compile Failed while loading AuthorizedTypes from config: Configuration system failed to initialize

and 

RunWorkflow: Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException: Configuration system failed to initialize     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPNoCodeXomlCompiler.SubCompiler.DoCompile(WorkflowCompilerParameters parameters, String xomlSource, String assemblyName, CompilationPacket& packet, DirectoryInfo& tempDir)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPNoCodeXomlCompiler.SubCompiler.DoCompile(WorkflowCompilerParameters parameters, String xomlSource, String assemblyName, CompilationPacket& packet, DirectoryInfo& tempDir)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPNoCodeXomlCompiler.<>c__DisplayClasse.b__c()     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SecurityContext.RunAsProcess(CodeToRunElevated secureCode)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPNoCodeXomlCompiler.DoCompileNewAppDomain(WorkflowCompilerParameters parameters, String xomlSource, String assemblyName, SPWeb web, CompilationPacket& packet, DirectoryInfo& tempDir)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPNoCodeXomlCompiler.CompileBytes(Byte[] xomlBytes, Byte[] rulesBytes, Boolean doTestCompilation, String assemblyName, SPWeb web, Boolean forceNewAppDomain)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPNoCodeXomlCompiler.LoadXomlAssembly(SPWorkflowAssociation association, SPWeb web)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWinOeHostServices.LoadDeclarativeAssembly(SPWorkflowAssociation association)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWinOeHostServices.CreateInstance(SPWorkflow workflow)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWinOeEngine.RunWorkflow(SPWorkflowHostService host, SPWorkflow workflow, Collection`1 events, TimeSpan timeOut)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWorkflowManager.RunWorkflowElev(SPWorkflow workflow, Collection`1 events, SPWorkflowRunOptionsInternal runOptions)

and 

08/23/2012 08:51:01.55 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0CBC) 0x0DB8 SharePoint Foundation Workflow Infrastructure 98d8 Unexpected Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException: Configuration system failed to initialize     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPNoCodeXomlCompiler.SubCompiler.DoCompile(WorkflowCompilerParameters parameters, String xomlSource, String assemblyName, CompilationPacket& packet, DirectoryInfo& tempDir)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPNoCodeXomlCompiler.SubCompiler.DoCompile(WorkflowCompilerParameters parameters, String xomlSource, String assemblyName, CompilationPacket& packet, DirectoryInfo& tempDir)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPNoCodeXomlCompiler.<>c__DisplayClasse.b__c()     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SecurityContext.RunAsProcess(CodeToRunElevated secureCode)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPNoCodeXomlCompiler.DoCompileNewAppDomain(WorkflowCompilerParameters parameters, String xomlSource, String assemblyName, SPWeb web, CompilationPacket& packet, DirectoryInfo& tempDir)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPNoCodeXomlCompiler.CompileBytes(Byte[] xomlBytes, Byte[] rulesBytes, Boolean doTestCompilation, String assemblyName, SPWeb web, Boolean forceNewAppDomain)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPNoCodeXomlCompiler.LoadXomlAssembly(SPWorkflowAssociation association, SPWeb web)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWinOeHostServices.LoadDeclarativeAssembly(SPWorkflowAssociation association)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWinOeHostServices.CreateInstance(SPWorkflow workflow)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWinOeEngine.RunWorkflow(SPWorkflowHostService host, SPWorkflow workflow, Collection`1 events, TimeSpan timeOut)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWorkflowManager.RunWorkflowElev(SPWorkflow workflow, Collection`1 events, SPWorkflowRunOptionsInternal runOptions) 3010f8ef-7f1c-4adf-abba-7abfd48a28db

Now if the same workflow tried to use the same failing server to process the request the length of pause of our original 5 minute would grow experientially leading to the timer job  in some cases not even attempting to wake to workflow for days.

After reviewing the workflow counter in perfmon for this server it became apparent that no workflow has ever run properly on the this troubled server. This lead to step one of helping resolve this problem which was turning off the "Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Workflow Timer Service" on the troubled server. This stopped new occurrences [Workflow Name]failed to run in the workflow history. Happy me.

Step 2 how ever is how do we get the workflows to run on the troubled server? this still remains a mystery. Maybe ill find the answer for a different post.

Retrieving the COM class factory for component failed due to the following error: 80040154

Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {XXXXXXXX-XX...} failed due to the following error: 80040154

This error came out of nowhere today on one of our IIS boxes. There are appears to be several ways to resolve this issue:

1. Modify your project's platform from 'Any CPU' to 'X86' in Project Properties, Build/Platform's Target in Visual Studio
2. If your Application is a Web-Based Application, try setting IIS to run in 32-bit mode. You can do this by going to IIS Manager, selecting the Application Pool, then choosing "Advanced Settings". The second option from the top is "Enable 32-bit Applications".
3. If your Application is Web-Based, it could be that the com object was not configured to allow launch and access permissions for the aspnet user identity. Under administrative tools > Component services under the tree view, go to Component Services > Computers > My Computer > DCOM Config and find the registered com object. Right click for properties. Under the security tag, customize the Permissions to allow asp.net user
4. Check that the app pool is running on the correct version of .net. 

The problem for us was fix number 4, some how the app pool had switch from 4.0 to 2.0 .net. The suspect was a recent patch update.

Easy SQL split field

Here is an easy way to split a field into a left and right side use a particular splitting char (in this case a space)

SELECT     
    LEFT(TaskNo, charindex( ' ', TaskNo) ) as TheLeftSide, 
    RIGHT(TaskNo, len(TaskNo) - charindex( ' ', TaskNo) ) as  TheRightSide 
FROM         sometablename