Question

Invalid character was found in the mail header: '<'

Workflow Version 9

Updated June 29, 2015

asked on March 7, 2014

Today I found 6 workflows that had terminated due to the above. That message is displayed in the messages section of the workflow details. Here's the thing: it's not consistent.

These are the first I've noticed out of hundreds of this particular workflow that have completed just fine. The successfully completed workflows are routing and emailing to the same guy - his address is retrieved via Trustee Directory info.

Anybody have any ideas?

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Replies

replied on March 11, 2014

Try adding a Track Tokens activity just before the activity throwing the error to see if there is an issue in the tokens.

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replied on March 7, 2014

Are you setting the subject with tokens? Is one of their values including that character?

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replied on March 7, 2014

Yes, the subject grabs a field that contains the Requisitioner's name. A previous email task included in a 'Route to User' activity in the same workflow did not trigger the error. That activity is literally about 10 steps away from the one that fails.

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replied on March 11, 2014

Any further input?

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replied on March 12, 2014

So I put a Track Tokens activity in there and on the step where the error occurs, I see no tokens that contain a "<" sign. Further, I restarted the workflow instances in question and they move along happily without any changes to the entry.

Weird :-/

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replied on March 13, 2014

It may have been there was something you didn't see originally in the email and republishing got rid of it. Oftentimes just republishing a workflow helps more than you'd expect

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replied on March 13, 2014

Thanks Matt, I'll keep that in mind if it recurs.

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replied on June 25, 2015

I have encountered this issue many times. Recently, I made a big change to workflow and published the changes. Now, those documents that were active in the old workflow instance and getting this error whenever it attempts to run an email activity. There are a few email activities and all of them have triggered this error.

1. What can I do to re-run these documents?

2. What can I do to fix this issue for documents still running in these old workflow instances?

3. Is there anything I can provide to Laserfiche to troubleshoot this elusive issue?

Just my luck, these issues always happen in my most complex workflows, so re-running them through the process is not really a solution. The WF is updating and pulling data in other systems and capturing approvals.

Thanks for the help.

running WF 9.1.1

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replied on June 29, 2015

This seems to happen when the email address is set with a token and that token does not exist when the activity is trying to run.

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replied on June 29, 2015

I'll look into that. It might make sense based on the "who" involved in some of these. We are using LF users tied to AD accounts instead of just AD accounts, so names don't always match when doing a user look up against the AD.

If I perform a find user activity and no match is found, shouldn't the token be empty? It sounds like it contains an error message instead.

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replied on June 29, 2015

That depends. The token would be empty if the activity ran and didn't find the user. But it could not exist if it comes from an activity that was added when the workflow was edited and has not actually run in that instance. For ex, you have Find User, route to User, wait for entry change, email based on the Find User token. While the workflow instance is waiting, you add a second Find User somewhere before the waiting activity and modify the email to use tokens from this new activity. When you publish and update the running instance, the email activity will fail because the tokens from the second Find User do no exist since the activity never got a chance to run.

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Invalid character was found in the mail header: '<'

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