Nintex Workflow - How to Troubleshoot an Error

A - OBJECTIVE: 

Your Nintex workflows failed to run ? This article is going to share several methods to troubleshoot the issue.

B - PROBLEMS :

Typical Error Messages from Nintex Workflows: 

• Workflow Name failed to start.
• Workflow has ended unexpectedly for This Instance

C - SOLUTION:

Method 1 (item level): Run Now

• At the workflow item, you can try running the individual action first to ensure your inputs or configuration are correct
• In this example, Query List is tested with CAML editor, and you can click Run Now to test your CAML query

 

 Method 2 (item level): get workflow details (variables or interim results).

• You can make use of either 

• (a) Log in history list [to log the details into the instance history], or
• (b) Send Notification [to send the details directly to your email]
• You can view the details by following these steps:
• Step 1: Workflow History page (e.g. https://anthonynhn.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/NintexWorkflow/Preview.aspx?WorkflowId=f838195f-d50d-411c-94b2-3b1464372c3f&Category=List&ListId=3f30ef04-e84b-4f5b-a811-4273ea6c66a5  )
• Step 2: click to a specific Workflow Instance, then click to view detailed logs
• Step 3: read the details

 Method 3 (item level): Heavy-load workflow components (such as CAML query, For Each loop, or Run Parallel Actions), or form component (such as List Lookup).

• Issue: workflow may fail while it is running halfway
• Recommendation: additional actions (Commit Pending Changes, Pause for 1 min) should be added after every iteration in the loop or after the query to ensure the workflow has sufficient time and resource to complete it, such as

Method 4 (workflow level): Correlation ID error

• A workflow runs halfway and throws a error with correlation ID
• Recommendation: you can make use of SharePoint Powershell to get detailed logs from the server end as follows (with a specific error ID or timeframe): 

Merge-SPLogFile -Path "C:\ErrorLog.txt" -Correlation "0908cb9c-def6-605c-a8ef-9196988fb4a3"

or

Merge-SPLogFile -Path "C:\Logs\FarmMergedLog.log" -Overwrite -StartTime "10/14/2013 15:55" -EndTime "10/14/2013 16:05"

 Method 5 (workflow level): verbose log

•  Worst-case scenario, you need to get the extremely detailed logs (verbose log) from Nintex, this feature can be activated at SharePoint Central Admin (reference link).
• You can see the detailed logs for every workflow instances

• You can scan through all details in the workflow instance as expected

D - CONFIGURATION:

Please contact me at anthonynhn@gmail.com for further advice.