Sunday, April 19, 2009

The workflow failed to start due to an internal error

Another fun bout with SharePoint! This one was a good challenge. I have a big WSP solution built with the VSEWSS extensions, and I wanted to add in my workflow to the solution. The workflow had been working just fine, so I merged in the project file, created a new feature in the WSP View of the project, added in the reference to the project output, and we're good to go!

Except after I associated the workflow and tried to use it, I got the very helpful error "the workflow failed to start due to an internal error". Nothing in the Application viewer, in the 12 Hive logs, just the friendly ol error message and nothing more.

We'll leave off all the things I tried (removing old copies of the workflow, new GUIDs, new namespace, new...well, you get the idea) and here's what did work: when I associated the workflow, I created a new Task and Workflow History list rather than use the ones that were in the site definition. Did that and the workflow is flowing along now. Nice!

I do indeed have a copy of the Tasks list in the site definition.