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Msdn Tech >> SharePoint Products and Technologies >> SharePoint - Workflow

Issues With Delay Activity

Has anybody had any success using the Delay activity within Visual Studio authored workflows?

Whenever I include a Delay activity in my workflows the workflow goes to sleep and never wakes up. If I listen for a Delay activity along with other events inside a Listen activity, I find that the other events (for example, OnTaskChanged) cause the workflow to be rehydrated as expected but the Delay activity does not. It doesn't seem to make any difference what the TimeoutDuration is set to or whether it's set statically in the designer or dynamically inside an InitiializeTimeoutDuration method.

Does anyone have some sample code with Delay activities working correctly?

[702 byte] By [NickCox] at [2008-2-18]

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# 1

I am having the same issue with this ... does anyone have any idea how to go around this issue? or is it just me not using it proper. I have a delay activity with a code activity before and after. I am using ASP.net and ManualWorkflowScheduler. The code reaches the delay activity , fires off the initialize timeowtduration and then goes to sleep. The rest of the code never gets executed.

dawit at 2007-9-5 >

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# 2

This is a bug in workflow runtime. Microsoft has produced a quick fix (System.Workflow.Runtime.dll) for it and the DelayActivity works fine with it, but I have no idea when it will be available for public.

Sergiy at 2007-9-5 >

# 3

Sergiy,

Just out of curiosity, do you have any more information on the fix and how did you get your hands on it?

rnellis2002

rnellis2002 at 2007-9-5 >

# 4

Delay activity in RTM version doesn't fire when used with Sharepoint because of a bug in delay activity. Please refer following links.

a. http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2006/11/18/developing-workflows-in-vs-part-1-workflow-objects-and-a-crash-course-on-mechanics.aspx#1242927 (Eliene Hao, whose Program Manager in Sharepoint Workflows, confirms that it’s a bug and that Microsoft is working on hotfix for it)
b. http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/28654504/re-delayactivity-in-a-wo.aspx
c. http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=980866&SiteID=1
d. http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=994867&SiteID=1
e. http://www.novolocus.com/display.php?id=331&backName=Index&backURL=index.php%3Fpage%3D1%26cat%3Dmicrosoft.workflow%23331

Call Microsoft PSS for -KB929816-X86

Display123 at 2007-9-5 >

# 5

So, I obtained the fix thanks to the Enterprise Go people - PSS couldn't help, YMMV - and Delay now works. Sort of.

I set up a delay to repeat every ten minutes in an infinite loop. Watching the workflow history I can see the delay fire after maybe twenty minutes, then an hour, another time after maybe four or five hours. There doesn't seem to be much of a pattern to it.

Is anyone else still having issues after installing the patch?

NickCox at 2007-9-5 >

# 6

Where did you get the hot-fix? I too called PSS and they had no idea.

Dhupads at 2007-9-5 >

# 7

I had to contact the Enterprise Go programme support people.

NickCox at 2007-9-5 >

# 8

Are you having any problems with it? I contacted Microsoft Support for it and they said the hot fix was released but had been pulled because of some issues. I really need this fixed and still don't even have an ETA on when it will be available.

JoeC. at 2007-9-5 >

# 9

I can't vouch for the Share Point, but I've had success with delay timers hosted in asp.net work flows. If you're using a the ManualWorkflowSchedulerService you need to set the UseActiveTimers=true or construct it like so: ManualWorkflowSchedulerService  foo = new ManualWorkflowSchedulerService(true);
Good luck with the SharePoint issues.

Cheers,
homertbush

homertbush at 2007-9-5 >

# 10

The QFE is released by Microsoft and we're now using it. So far so good. You still have to contact MS support to get it though as it has not been through full regression testing yet.

JoeCataford at 2007-9-5 >

# 11

Hi all,

I am developping (for a client) a custom approbation sequential workflow in a Sharepoint site (MOSS 2007). I have to use the Delay Activity, and as you guess, my workflow doesn't reload at all after the delay.

I have retrieved the Windows Workflow Foundation "KB929816" hotfix and installed it, but it doesn't solve my problem... (I checked if the dlls were correctly patched and that's ok)

Did somebody succeed to use the delayactivity in a Sharepoint site? Is there something special to do?

PS : For your information, MOSS 2007 uses its own persistence service (SPWinOePersistenceService) and I doesn't seem to be configurable...

Thanks for any reply

JeromeDECOUENNE at 2007-9-5 >

# 12

It's working for us. We had to install Windows Server 2003 SP2 though. Without SP2 it didn't work.

JoeCataford at 2007-9-5 >

# 13

Thank you for your reply

I have installed the SP2 and it works now!

The strange thing is that the SP2 is not in the prerequities in the KB article...

Hope I won't have more problems on the delay activity