Andy’s Techie Blog » Blog Archive » Sharepoint Question…HELP!?

Sharepoint Question…HELP!?

Posted on April 21st, 2008 AndyParkes 11 comments

A while back I was experimenting with e-mail enabled lists and workflows

I had it setup so that when an email was received (a backup failure alert for example) it would go straight into a sharepoint email enabled list where it would then examine the contents and set some column information

The experiment went well and I left it at that with the plan to do something with it at a later date

That date ended up being today.

I create an email enabled list and had a workflow that examined the email and performed actions after. While I was testing I fired the workflow off manually and it all worked fine

I set it to run automatically and that’s where I had a problem. The workflow just wouldn’t fire

I found a knowledgebase article that indicates a security fix in service pack 1 stops workflows starting automatically

I followed the instructions and reset the application pool logon account which stopped SharePoint picking my emails up from the “drop folder”

So i set the Sharepoint timer service to the same logon account and this fixed that problem but it still wasn’t firing off the workflow

If I create a new item myself the workflow starts automatically as expected

So it’s only incoming emails it has a problem with

Further research suggests that it’s the anonymous nature of external e-mails (that are marked as created by the “SYSTEM ACCOUNT”) but this isn’t the case in this situation because if i send a message internally the workflow still doesn’t fire (and yes it is marked as created by the internal user)

Said research can be found here

http://spforsquirrels.blogspot.com/2008/02/sharepoint-designer-workflow-does-not.html (read the comments)

http://www.combined-knowledge.com/Downloads/How%20to%20configure%20Email%20Enabled%20Lists%20in%20Moss2007%20RTM%20using%20Exchange%202003.pdf (read the troubleshooting system)

I found an entry on the managed newsgroups (do a search for “Workflow doesn’t start” and MANTAS) which recognised the problem. The end user suggested he could create an event handler to manually fire the workflow but this isn’t an option for me for two reasons

1) I’m not a sharepoint developer – this is a “no-code” solution

2) This needs to be easily deployable for other installations as it’s a really useful feature that used to work..and doesn’t now

Any help would be appreciated if you have run into this before. I’ll update the post of I find out anything else

SharePoint
11 Responses to “Sharepoint Question…HELP!?”
1. Vijay Singh Riyait April 21st, 2008 at 7:21 pm
  
  Is this with WSS 2.0 or 3.0? Are you doing this on your SBS Box?
2. andyparkes April 21st, 2008 at 8:05 pm
  
  Hi Vijay
  
  I forgot to mention how it’s setup
  
  It’s WSS 3.0 and i’m creating the workflows in SharePoint designer
  
  Yes i’m doing it on my SBS box on a side-by-side install
  
  The thing is this HAS worked. When i tried this out i was quite pleased with myself for getting it up and running!
  
  A while after i noticed it had stopped processing but thought it was just because i’d been playing. On reflection it’s after the service pack
  
  The weird bit it the fact it’s only on e-mails i’m having the problem
  
  To be honest i spent the whole day staring at that sharepoint site so i’m hoping to go back to it tomorrow and pick up something stupid or spot something i didn’t test….fingers crossed!
3. Vijay Singh Riyait April 21st, 2008 at 8:39 pm
  
  The MS Doc on installing WSS 3.0 on SBS 2003 says that “The integration of incoming e-mail with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 does not work because of a conflict with Exchange.”. Quite what that means I am not sure as I haven’t tried that. But you say you had it working?
4. andyparkes April 21st, 2008 at 9:21 pm
  
  Yes it does…
  
  But you know me, when did something like that stop me?
  
  What doesn’t work is Exchange / SMTP integration
  
  The “drop folder” functionality is just a normal folder that the sharepoint timer service monitors for new emails (.eml files)
  
  I have a script (not mine but it tweaked it for my purposes) that pulls the emails from a mailbox and drops them into that folder
  
  I have a post on it in my drafts which i’ll post soon
  
  As i said before it was working quite happily until the service pack install
5. Vijay Singh Riyait April 21st, 2008 at 11:29 pm
  
  Ok, I see what you’re doing. So after installing WSS 3.0 SP1, things have broken?
6. andyparkes April 22nd, 2008 at 11:37 am
  
  As far as i can tell yes
  
  It 100% definitely worked previously.
  Granted I’m assuming it’s the service pack that has stopped this as i can’t think of anything else
7. Andy Dale April 22nd, 2008 at 4:30 pm
  
  officetalk have developed an application called Autom@tor which manages emails filters them by content to appropriate SharePoint Folders. For example if you had a ‘Project B’ then you could set it to send any email that hits exchange straight to the Project B document library.
  
  Please contact me if you want to find out more about
  Autom@tor for SharePoint.
  
  Andy Dale
  andy.dale@office-talk.com
  http://isthelocalnetworkdying.blogspot.com
8. skippy May 23rd, 2008 at 11:16 am
  
  Using an email enabled list, I found that both SPD and VS workflows would not kick off automatically when the list received an email. I also tried using an event receiver on the ItemAdded event to then fire the workflow or even update the item in the event receiver. The event receiver & workflow both started and apparently completed, they just didn’t execute any of the code that modified the item. There were no error messages.
  
  As usual it turned out to be so much easier than all of that. Here’s how I fixed it for my setup:
  
  - Set the Service Account to a domain admin account. Go to the Central Admin portal for your Sharepoint server, select Operations, Service Accounts (see http://kbalertz.com/947284/declarative-workflow-start-automatically-after-install-Windows-SharePoint-Services-Service.aspx for more info).
  - Set the Windows SharePoint Services Timer to log on as the SAME domain admin account. To do this go to Start -> Programs -> Administrative Tools -> Services. Find the Windows SharePoint Services Timer and open the properties. Go to the Log On tab and set the service to log on using the same account you used for the step above.
  
  Using this solution all of the following will run automatically & execute as expected when the list receives an email:
  
  - Event Receivers
  - Visual Studio Workflows
  - Sharepoint Designer Workflows
  
  Ahh Sharepoint. Gotta love it.
9. andyparkes June 1st, 2008 at 9:34 am
  
  Skippy,
  
  Thanks for the comment.
  
  I did mention that knowledge base article in the post
  
  Did you fix this on an SBS setup?
  
  I’ve already set the timer service and the app pool to run under a domain admin account and it’s still not firing workflows
10. Still Having WSS Email Workflow Problems « Andys Techie Blog June 27th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
  
  [...] Having WSS Email Workflow Problems June 27, 2008 at 1:17 pm | In SharePoint | I posted a while back about a problem I was having with my WSS workflow’s not working when I used an email to initiate [...]
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