Symptoms

K2 Workflow Access Error
 

Diagnoses

When attempting to load up K2 Workflow for SharePoint, we receive a variation of the following error:

"Unable to load templates from the server.

A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 - Could not open a connection to SQL Server)"

This error occur when also trying to reuse or edit an existing workflow. Full error message attached in text file.
 

Resolution

We used the "Sharepoint 2010 Manager" tool from (https://spm.codeplex.com/) to take a look at the hidden list that would store the K2 for Sharepoint Web Designer SQL connection string for the site. We noticed that the datasource was pointed toward a "sqlservername" that was not resolvable via ping it was indicated that only the fully qualified name "sqlservername.domain.com" would resolve. As such we added hosts file entries on the Sharepoint WFEs and Central Administration server such that the "sqlservername" would resolve to the same IP address as the fully qualified name. The Web designer is now loading processes successfully.