Workflow Invoke Business Process Not Working After Publishing from Production to Test

asked on January 18, 2023 • Show version history

We have several workflows that have the Invoke Business Process activities in them. As part of a project, I am working on to get our Test environment to match production, I exported some workflows from production and imported them into test. I walked through the import wizard in Workflow to update them to point to the correct repository, databases, and Forms instance.

When looking at the workflows after they successfully publish in test, the activities show the correct information in the Properties pane. However, when I kickoff one of the workflows that uses the Invoke Business Process activity, it says it was completed, but it in fact never ran.

If I edit the workflow, select the Invoke Business Process activity, and click the Fields drop down to select the process, the value that was there disappears. After I select the correct value and republish, the workflow works correctly.

We are currently running two different versions of workflow in production and test. Production is 10.4.3 and Test is 11.0.2209.835. I do recall running into this same issue before we upgraded our test environment though and remember reading comments from others on Answers with the same issue in the past.

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replied on January 19, 2023 • Show version history

This feels familiar, it probably should not be stating that it is running successful, but the broken connection makes sense.

The workflow selected in the invoke activity is a workflow published on the ~~test~~ prod server and it may not be referenced simply by the name displayed in the drop down. So importing a workflow with the same exact name might not keep the link from breaking and I don't think the import wizard handles asking you to update specifically selected workflows inside of activities. Only global service connections like repository, forms, etc.

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replied on January 19, 2023

That's just it though. The import wizard does ask you about updating the forms connection, but after setting it to 'Use existing object' you experience what I described in the original post.

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replied on January 19, 2023

Is Forms_a the name of the forms process you selected to invoke or the name of the Forms web service connection?

I think what is not being handled is the specific link to the exact process selected inside of the activity, not the connection to your Forms service itself.

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replied on January 19, 2023

Forms_a is the name of the web service as it is setup in the Workflow Administration Console.

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replied on January 19, 2023

Exactly, so the wizard updated the web service connection but not the connection to the exact process you want to invoke. When you said this

"and click the Fields drop down to select the process, the value that was there disappears"

It is clear that the process itself, selected on the old server, was never updated to the new process on the new server until you took this step, it is not anywhere in the wizard that I know of.

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replied on January 19, 2023

I understand what you are saying, but I believe Workflow references the Forms processes by name, not by ID, so it should work as long as the process name is the same, which it is in this case.

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replied on January 23, 2023

We can't see under the hood but there are 2 signs it is referencing it by an internal reference rather than a simple string that matches the name. One is that the selection disappears when you click on it, this means it noticed it was hooked up to something null. The other is that by re-selecting the same name, it resolves the issue. Since you technically selected the same string value, but it fixed the issue, it gives me the impression something else is going on under the hood.

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replied on January 23, 2023

This is why I am bringing this up, because we can't see under the hood. If you are correct that it is using an internal reference of some kind, then selecting the new Forms server during the import wizard doesn't make sense since a Workflow Admin would still need to touch every workflow to update them.

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replied on January 23, 2023

Yes, the wizard would have to ask you to match up both the server AND the processes selected within the activity for an import to work and I don't think it does. The reason I remember this was specifically the fact that it acts as if the activity is completing successfully when it is in fact never even running.

This really threw me for a loop last time it happened, it should at the very least error.

You can also verify that it has an internal reference, instead of by name, by changing the name of your forms process after it is hooked up and see if it still works.

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Workflow Invoke Business Process Not Working After Publishing from Production to Test

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