could you clarify what exactly do you want to achieve?

- do you to place a link to guideline document on task form?

- do you really want  to upload guideline document to a task providing its URL?

both way should work, so clarify as well what problem exactly do you have and/or what error do you get.

Hi,

I would like to attach the document to a task directly. But when I put in the URL of the document into an approval task, the document does not get attached, as it is not hosted on the SharePoint farm but on another web server...

do you have direct link to the file on remote server or is it generated dynamically? isn't there any redirect to the file on remote server?

do you need some additional authentication on remote server?

if you put the link into windows explorer do you get to the file?

Ideally the link is generated dynamically. And in the best of worlds, it would be a SQL Report rendered directly as PDF.

I have tried attaching an Excel file (as PoC) stored on the same external server (with a static name) and here is what I get:

Workflow Designer:

E-mail received:

Text file content:

Error attaching file from http://XXXX/Budget%20Tracker.xlsx.

System.IO.FileNotFoundException: The Web application at http://XXX/Budget%20Tracker.xlsx could not be found. Verify that you have typed the URL correctly. If the URL should be serving existing content, the system administrator may need to add a new request URL mapping to the intended application.

   at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite.LookupSiteInfo(SPFarm farm, Boolean contextSite, Boolean swapSchemeForPathBasedSites, Uri& requestUri, Boolean& lookupRequiredContext, Guid& applicationId, Guid& contentDatabaseId, Guid& siteId, Guid& siteSubscriptionId, SPUrlZone& zone, String& serverRelativeUrl, Boolean& hostHeaderIsSiteName, Boolean& appWebRequest, String& appHostHeaderRedirectDomain, String& appSiteDomainPrefix, String& subscriptionName, String& appSiteDomainId, Uri& primaryUri)

   at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite..ctor(SPFarm farm, Uri requestUri, Boolean contextSite, Boolean swapSchemeForPathBasedSites, SPUserToken userToken)

   at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite..ctor(SPFarm farm, Uri requestUri, Boolean contextSite, SPUserToken userToken)

   at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite..ctor(String requestUrl, SPUserToken userToken)

   at Nintex.Workflow.HumanApproval.MessageAttachment.GetAsMailAttachment(String processedSource, String processedFileName, INWWorkflowContext context)