Workflow troubleshooting
This page is for administrators and web managers when the approval process does not move. It condenses the troubleshooting of Workflows, section 9 into the cases public bodies meet most, with the public-sector angle: tell the author and the requester what happened, and keep the record.
Contents
- First look
- Approved but not published
- Waiting for an approver who is gone
- Send for publishing did nothing
- Failed and stuck processes
- Cancelling safely
- Related pages
First look
Open Setup > Workflow processes (/workflow/processlist) and type the content's name in Find a process. Each
card says in one grey line what the process waits for, with Open the approval request for approvals. The status
bar says whether the workflow cronjob is scheduled. The overview counts waiting, failed and stopped processes and
shows the oldest waiting one. If the list is empty, look under Stopped and All.
Approved but not published
Cause: the workflow cronjob (workflow.php, frequent part) did not run since the decision.
Status bar says not scheduled in the crontab: install the line from Setup > Cronjobs (Check that cronjobs run).
Run it now: Setup > Cronjobs, the Frequent card, Run part; or on the shell:
php runcronjobs.php -s <siteaccess> --script=workflow.phpReload the process list: the process is gone and the content is published.
Waiting for an approver who is gone
A request already made keeps its participants. If nobody in it can decide any more:
- Fix the approvers first: add people to the approvers' group, or name a group in the Approve event.
- Cancel the waiting processes (below); their versions become drafts again.
- Tell the authors to send them for publishing again; the new requests go to the current approvers.
Send for publishing did nothing
A failed or cancelled process with the same key (same object, version, workflow and user) is removed by the first attempt, which stops the operation once; the second attempt works. Cancel failed processes from the list first to avoid it (Workflows, section 4.4).
Failed and stuck processes
| Card says | Do |
|---|---|
| Failed | read the technical details for the event's answer; cancel the process |
| Marked as running, for hours | the run was cut off; cancel; look in var/log/error.log for the run that died |
| Trigger not recorded | cannot be resumed; cancel, then publish the content again |
| Step "None" | the workflow was deleted or never reached; cancel |
| Waiting for its parent workflow | a Multiplexer child; cancel the children together with the parent |
Cancelling safely
Cancel... on a card, or tick several and Cancel selected processes...; a confirmation says what will happen. Confirmed: a pending version becomes a draft again, the approval request leaves the inbox, the process is removed. Nothing is published and no content is deleted; the way back is publishing the draft again. Cancelling does not undo what earlier events did (a mail already sent) (Workflows, section 7).
There is no console command to list or cancel processes; the page is the tool. For a read-only look at the table,
the guide gives a SQL query against ezworkflow_process.
Related pages
- Approval workflows overview
- Cronjob monitoring
- Collaboration inbox
- Workflows guide
- Free documentation: this page is free to copy, translate and improve under the GNU FDL 1.3.
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