The workflow failed to start due to an internal error

I was working on an Office 365 environment building some workflows when they all stopped working and I started getting the error:

"The workflow failed to start due to an internal error"

A quick fix was to go to

C:\Users\<profile name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WebsiteCache

(note: you may need to allow hidden folders to be displayed)

Find the name of the site you are working on and rename the folder.

All started working again :)

SharePoint Saturday is back!

The day is filled with awesome presentations plus you can win a Lenovo Miix 2 just for being there.  You can also win tickets to the Australia SharePoint Conference and training vouchers.

Register for Brisbane at http://www.spsevents.org/city/Brisbane/Brisbane2014

SharePoint Saturday Australia

SharePoint Saturdays are about to kick off around Australia.  SharePoint Saturdays are
fantastic events for SharePoint administrators, end users, architects, developers and other professionals that work with Microsoft SharePoint to get together and share ideas and knowledge.

This year there are 6 awesome events, kicking off in Adelaide in early May.

• Adelaide 3rd May 2014
• Brisbane 31st May 2014
• Perth 21st June 2014
• Melbourne 2nd August 2014
• Canberra 11th October 2014
• Sydney 29th November 2014

Each year local and international presenters share their thoughts on various aspects of SharePoint.  

Adelaide is currently taking submissions for speakers.  You can express you interest in presenting at SharePoint Saturday in Adelaide by completing a speaker submission on the SPEvents Adelaide site. 

SPEvents - SharePoint Saturday Adelaide 2014

This site also contains location information, selected speakers and presentation and will shortly be open for registration for the first of these great events.

Users missing information in SharePoint eventhough it is in their profile

In the past I've had an issue where people do not have all of their information in a sharepoint site.  I have resolved the issue by running the following powershell command  

Set-SPUser –Identity <account name> -Web <affected URL> -SyncFromAD

For example 

Set-SPUSer –Identity “i:0#W|DOMAIN\account” –SyncFromAD

The run the timer job called User Profile to SharePoint Quick Synchronization (this will be prefixed with the name of the user profile service) 

This behaviour is by design.  When a user first interacts with a site, SharePoint places the user and whatever information is known about that user in a hidden list, SharePoint then uses this list for permissions rather than regathering information from AD or the profiles.  SharePoint doesn’t update this list very well and needs some help to update it when information is added to a profile after a user has visited the site.

Bug with auto start workflows

​There appears to be a little bug in workflows that has crept into SharePoint since December 2011 CU.  If you have an auto start workflow and the library has require check out set to yes, then the workflow will not start and will be stuck in starting.  You can avoid it by setting require check out to No.  Microsoft are aware of the bug and “may” include it in June 2013 CU.  In the mean time you can install April 2013 CU and request the hotfix from MS, currently there is no KB number to reference you just explain the problem and they’ll FTP the hotfix to you.  Of course you should try this on a test environment first.

InfoPath - the operation could not be completed and can not open Document Infomation panel

I recently discovered a couple of interesting things regarding SharePoint and InfoPath while creating a custom Document Information Panel 

1. If you are trying to connect to a list or library on a site collection that is on a managed path you MUST also have a site collection on the root otherwise InfoPath will not let you connect to the library, and will give an error “The operation could not be completed”.
2. If you are creating a Document Information panel for a content type that you have deployed via a feature, then your columns MUST have StaticName and SourceID.  Without them your columns will work perfectly fine until you try to open the DIP, then it won’t open.

Office 2013 and SharePoint 2010

Any one using Office 2013 may be interested that there appears to have been an update for Office 2013 released recently that means Office 2013 and SharePoint 2010 have some issues working together.  You’ll know you have the update if you go to any SharePoint 2010 document library and go to Document, and try to create a new one.  If you get an error: 

                The operating system is not configured to run this application. 

Then you’ve gotten the update.  Removing the Office 2013 updates from add-remove programs and doing a restart will fix the problem.  May want to turn off auto updates though.