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Hi,

I keep getting the workflow error notification say the tasks failed to start when I scheduled an hourly list workflow.

The workflow I tried to schedule has to check the following two conditions

1.  Overdue flag is equal to "Y"

2.  Request Status is equal to "In progress"

The workflow was working fine if I manually run it with a record. (click on ellipsis edit button on SharePoint List record and select workflows. Then select this workflow and run)

But I was getting workflow err or email when I go to SharePoint List record, select Schedule Workflows and then select the same workflow and enter the date time to run.

Is the schedule I have setup only run for one record in the List or the entire List in SharePoint?

Please advise what is the step to schedule the workflow to run for the entire List in SharePoint.

Thanks,

Emily

What's the message error?

The error message is just shown "Failed to start". I cannot find the details of what is causing the failure.

isn't an instance of the workflow already running at the moment scheduler triggers its start?

you can only have one instance of a given workflow running on the item at a given time.

Hi Marian,

Thanks for your reply.

Could you please elaborate a bit more what did you mean "an instance of the workflow already running at the moment"?

PS: This is the first workflow I have scheduled to run by date.

Cheers,

Emily

Let's assume you have an item with ID=1 and no workflow running on it.

Now you start workflow X on this item. Workflow will start and run for some time. This is 1st running instance of workflow X.

If you try to start workflow X once again (2nd instance) while 1st instance is still running, it will fail wit an error 'Failed to start' since only one instance of workflow X is allowed to run at the same time.

if 1st instance finished and you tried to start workflow X after that it would start successfully since it would be only one instance running.

If you had abother workflow Y on the list and tried to start it while an instance of workflow X is running that would succeed as well since it's first instance of workflow Y.

If you however tried to start workflow Y while one instance of workflow Y would already run, it would again failed for the same  reason

Hope it's clearer now.

Hi Marian,

Apologies for the late response. I was side tracked by other issues for the past few weeks.

What I am trying to achieve here is to setup a schedule workflow (workflow Y) to check and end another workflow (workflow X) which has already started and pending to end for some time.

Is there a way for the Administrator to run a scheduler to end the workflow that have been opened for long time?

Thanks,
Emily

ok, thanks for explanation.

however, this still doesn't answer whether an instance of workflow Y is not already running when scheduler tries to start another instance.

I would say, for your scenarion it would be better if workflow Y is a site workflow instead of list one.

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