SharePoint

Troubleshooting SharePoint Approval Workflow

Greg Tate — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 22:06:05 GMT

Recently I was helping someone with a troubleshooting a stock Approval Workflow within a document library. Their request was simple…”Help!” They continued with…”My workflow used to work but all of sudden has stopped notifying people until the task is overdue…not sure when this changed but I need help now.” If this sounds familiar then read on.

Since we all know SharePoint never just stops (ha ha) I figured I needed to drop down and look at the little things, never know it just might work. That said the task list was enabled to send mail upon creation and long story short I had to hit the forums for advice, after all everything seemed in order, even the little things.

The point of this post is to give props to a very helpful blog post by Steve Chen where SharePoint 2007 alerts are explained in some very good detail and another to a the creators of the SharePoint Manager on codeplex.

As it turns out the solution to the problem here was using the SharePoint manager to set the EnableToAssignEmail flag to “False”, wait for the timer job to run (after we used stsadm to verify job-immediate-alerts were set), and then using the manager tool to reset the EnableToAssignEmail flag back to “True”. One important note here is to make sure you hit save…otherwise it’s not going to write to SharePoint.

It would also be wise to remember you are using a tool that can seriously, and rather easily cause some harm to SharePoint if used by someone unfamiliar.

SharePoint, IE8, WebClient, And Credentials

Greg Tate — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 22:36:46 GMT

So I’ve been struggling with an odd issue here at the office. SharePoint kept prompting me for credentials in IE8 but not IE7. To fix this I simply moved the url http://sharepoint.abccompany.com from trusted sites to intranet sites. Problem Solved!…So I thought

Later we noticed when a user would attempt to open a document in any library the user would again be prompted for credentials. After what seemed like a week of Googleling (couple of hours) I discovered a two part MSFT hotfix to which I think SWEET this is fixed. But sadly the installer package informed me the fix wasn’t applicable to my machine. Seems at this point Microsoft has already included this in their service packs on Vista and Windows7. The sad thing is their service pack couldnt address the second part.

For those who havent clicked over to read the hot fix, part two added a Multi-String Value named AuthForwardServerList to your HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\WebClient\Parameters entry. Within this Key you are to define the servers to which your web client service would forward you credentials to without asking your permission(e.g *.abccompany.com).

Here is the code to get you started on Scripted fix. Just remember you will need to restart the WebClient service

Const HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE = &H80000002

‘Set Computer Name

strComputer = "."
Set objRegistry = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\default:StdRegProv")

'Set Value
strKeyPath = "SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\WebClient\Parameters"
strValueName = "AuthForwardServerList"
arrValue = Array("*.abccompany.com")

objRegistry.SetMultiStringValue HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, strKeyPath, strValueName, arrValue

As a parting note the HotFix states Windows XP machines aren't affected since they aren't shipped with IE8, but the ones I tested proved otherwise. Nonetheless it doesn't seem to harm the XP machines if you add this registry addition to them. Of course after this I’ve stumbled upon another issue I wasn’t aware of…a difference between user experience in IE8 32Bit and IE8 64Bit…Guess I know what I’m doing tomorrow :-)

Windows 2008 Server Logon Hang

Greg Tate — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 20:52:32 GMT

An interesting event occurred recently in a lab environment of a SharePoint Farm I was working on. This Farm (Moss 2007, Svr 2008, SQL 2008) was a medium farm scaled out in a virtual environment (VMWare)…If memory serves me we had some maintenance to perform on the VM Host which required us to shutdown all guests on this host. I figured this wasn’t a big deal since I had a fresh install of a functioning farm so I gave the VM admin the nod to take us down. Now we fast forward to the fun part…VM maintenance complete…Time to boot up the servers, up comes the SQL cluster, now the APP, then the Index, and last but not least the front ends.

As I “attempt” to log in I notice the WFE seems to be hung on the “Applying Computer Settings”…I’m not talking just a few minute hang, I’m talking an hour plus. After calling everyone in my rolodex (very short list) I had to call our pals at MSFT. Of course secretly I was hoping this was Kerberos issue since that meant I didn't have to solve it :-) (sorry Eric)

Anyway after days with MSFT their solution of course is to boot into safe mode and disable every service that isn’t already enabled in the normal startup via regedit…. I’m thinking “GREAT PLAN! Why did I call you again?"

As MSFT support was in their second day of diagnosis I noticed the following Microsoft KB article which mentioned certain essential services such as GP Client, DNS, Etc would not start automatically because of a deadlock between Service Control Manager and HTTP.SYS - This fit the observed behavior…Let’s try the fix in the KB…

Now for the fix

Boot Into SafeMode
Open Registry Editor
Navigate to HKLM\CurrentControlSet\Services\HTTP and create the following Multi-string value: DependOnService
Double click the new DependOnService value that you created
Enter CRYPTSVC in the Value Data field and click OK
Reboot Server in normal Mode

This event took three days from my life, days I can never regain so I offer this seemly simple fix yet buried solution in hopes I can save someone else.