SharePoint Windows Workflow breaks when we deploy it

Question

We have developed a custom visual studio workflow for SharePoint MOSS. It creates tasks for a document approval process and works fine on our development machines. We are using a main workflow activity and one custom child activity. We use binding on the properties to pass them throughout the workflow, all standard stuff for windows workflow, we think.

When we deploy this workflow to our test server, which is a small farm, our taskproperties/workflowproperties all seem to evaluate to null.

We have tried many, many different ways to solve this, including running the workflow as the admin account, manually recreating the the taskproperties in code etc. etc. without any success.

Can anyone shed any light on what could be the problem, the error is detailed below, all the best,

This error below is an Internal error, and seems to point to a error when a Task is created with a content type (SPWinOETaskService.CreateTaskWithContentType).

11/23/2009 19:09:54.47  w3wp.exe (0x1FB8)                        0x1CDC Windows SharePoint Services    Workflow Infrastructure        88xr Unexpected WinWF Internal Error, terminating workflow Id# 07ab6631-c656-4918-8ffe-7a09da3a3628  
    11/23/2009 19:09:54.47  w3wp.exe (0x1FB8)                        0x1CDC Windows SharePoint Services    Workflow Infrastructure        98d4 Unexpected System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. ---> System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWinOETaskService.CreateTaskWithContentTypeInternal(Guid taskId, SPWorkflowTaskProperties properties, Boolean useDefaultContentType, SPContentTypeId ctid, HybridDictionary specialPermissions)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWinOETaskService.CreateTaskWithContentType(Guid taskId, SPWorkflowTaskProperties properties, String taskContentTypeId, HybridDictionary specialPermissions)     --- End of inner exception stack trace ---     at System.RuntimeMethodHandle._InvokeMethodFast(Object target, Object[] arguments, SignatureStruct& sig, MethodAttributes methodAtt...  
    11/23/2009 19:09:54.47* w3wp.exe (0x1FB8)                        0x1CDC Windows SharePoint Services    Workflow Infrastructure        98d4 Unexpected ...ributes, RuntimeTypeHandle typeOwner)     at System.RuntimeMethodHandle.InvokeMethodFast(Object target, Object[] arguments, Signature sig, MethodAttributes methodAttributes, RuntimeTypeHandle typeOwner)     at System.Reflection.RuntimeMethodInfo.Invoke(Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object[] parameters, CultureInfo culture, Boolean skipVisibilityChecks)     at System.Reflection.RuntimeMethodInfo.Invoke(Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object[] parameters, CultureInfo culture)     at System.RuntimeType.InvokeMember(String name, BindingFlags bindingFlags, Binder binder, Object target, Object[] providedArgs, ParameterModifier[] modifiers, CultureInfo culture, String[] namedParams)     at System.Workflow.Activities.CallExternalMethodActivity.Execute(Acti...  
    11/23/2009 19:09:54.47* w3wp.exe (0x1FB8)                        0x1CDC Windows SharePoint Services    Workflow Infrastructure        98d4 Unexpected ...vityExecutionContext executionContext)     at System.Workflow.ComponentModel.ActivityExecutor`1.Execute(T activity, ActivityExecutionContext executionContext)     at System.Workflow.ComponentModel.ActivityExecutor`1.Execute(Activity activity, ActivityExecutionContext executionContext)     at System.Workflow.ComponentModel.ActivityExecutorOperation.Run(IWorkflowCoreRuntime workflowCoreRuntime)     at System.Workflow.Runtime.Scheduler.Run()

Answer 1

Since the error is CreateTaskWithContentType, have you created any content type which is available on the dev machine, but has not been deployed to the test server.

EDIT

Just had another look at your error message. I am wondering if SPWinOETaskService is what is null. Is there a service related to workflow that is not running on the farm.

Answer 2

We found that if we have not added the task content type to the specific workflow task list then we got this error:

To do this, in advanced settings for the workflow list, allow mamangement of content types.

You can then on the manage list screen, add from existing content types and select your custom one.

Your workflow should then work without error.

hth