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Workflow getting stuck in Pause and State Machine action

  • 25 April 2023
  • 7 replies
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I have a pause for action, where I have given pause for 0.12 minutes. But gets stuck in pause and stays there forever.Similar thing happens in, after change state, its gets stuck in State Machine action and stays there forever and the error I get is <workflow name> failed to run. I am working on SharePoint 2016 On-Prem.

Also this issue happens randomly, not all the workflow instances have this issue. Any suggestions?

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Best answer by SimonMuntz 26 April 2023, 08:49

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Userlevel 6
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Hi,

 

Just to clarify, the time set in a pause action is not how long the workflow will pause for but how long before it adds the workflow back into the timer service queue.

As for the workflow, there can be many reasons why a workflow does not wake up from a pause (dehydration). Check the Knowledge base for Failed to run issues : https://community.nintex.com/nintex-for-sharepoint-67

If this issue continues you may need to contact Nintex support and Microsoft support as Nintex workflows run on Microsofts workflow engine. At a high level this is either an issue with the timer service or the workflow design (its too big).

 

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Hi @SimonMuntz 

Thanks for the guidance.

Userlevel 4
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@SM123 

Hi check out in those technical articles the ones regarding recent SharePoint updates.

I have seen some similar issues over the last year where you will need to modify the web.config file. Also check out the articles on workflow being that reference the owstimer service config file.

As per Simon, raise a support ticket to help you on these.

Userlevel 6
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Hi @Gavin-Adams 

I did think about CU’s causing this issue but as it is not affecting all workflows and is randomly happening I did not suggest looking at those fixes but thank you for your input.

Userlevel 4
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Thanks @SimonMuntz 

Yeah I did see the appears to be random which threw me as well but thought to suggest it anyhow.

I’ve come across both issues for Nintex on-prem over the last 12months with SharePoint.

For me Issues related to web.config impacted all workflow instances.

Issues that were fixed with update to owstimer config was only for workflows that had a state machine changing state to a different branch where it was stuck. As soon as I updated the owstimer config and restarted all the stuck state machine workflows moved forward.

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@SM123

Hi check out in those technical articles the ones regarding recent SharePoint updates.

I have seen some similar issues over the last year where you will need to modify the web.config file. Also check out the articles on workflow being that reference the owstimer service config file.

As per Simon, raise a support ticket to help you on these.

It was this for us.  There were Sharepoint critical updates, which lead to Nintex udates and somewhere along the line the timer service stopped working correctly.  We had to edit the web.config.  I think we were the first ones to experience this and Nintex wrote a white paper on it.  Good luck.

Userlevel 5
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Hi @SM123 
Did you resolve your query?

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