How to break a workflow - Breaking Bad with Nintex Workflows

Sometimes a customer asks for help telling that the workflow "suddenly" is not working, and on a couple of cases I realized that some user made a change on the list/library or another stuff that affected the workflow.

Some basics to review are the following:

• A column was deleted
• A column was changed
• The list was deleted
• Group Name changed

Case 1

A column was deleted

When a column is deleted from the SharePoint list/library, it happens different things depending on where you were using that field.  In some cases the workflow ends with an error, on other cases you just view missing information

Let's see 2 samples:

• The deleted column was used on a "Send Notification" action
• The deleted column was used on a "Update Item" action

Send Notification

On a workflow sample when I used a column to be shown on an email, the workflow goes on and I just see some missing information on my email where I should see the information of the column.

Update Item

On a workflow sample when I used a column to be updated with that action, the workflow ends with some errors, but with any clue that the column was deleted.

In my case I received 2 emails. The first one just says that an error has ocurred.

Then I receive another email with more information and the following message.

"The workflow could not update the item, possibly because one or more columns for the item require a different type of information."

It says that the workflow could not update the item, and a possible cause of the problem

Unfortunately there is no way to know, easily, what was the field you used on your original configuration.

In that case if you are updating another fields just save the action and all will become normally.

On other post I'll show another cases.