My first blog post EVER! 😀 (so please pardon any blog post etiquette that I may not follow… guess stating that this is my first blog post ever would be one of those?)
So about 3 weeks ago, I was working with a co-worker on creating a Nintex Workflow for Office 365. The Nintex workflow will start once a user creates a Custom Folder Content Type and fills out a few metadata. The workflow will then perform the following actions:
1. Create a bunch of subfolders within this new folder, and set the metadata that was entered by the user.
2. Create some documents based on a few Custom Document Content Types (mostly Word docs, based on .dotx), and set the metadata tags that was entered by the user.
We then tried to open the Custom Document Content Types that were created, and we were able to both view it with Word Online and in the Word client.
We then demo it to users for an application that they need it for.
Two days after the meeting, we went to create more tests by creating a bunch of Custom Folder Content Type… and as expected, it created the sub folders, the documents within each subfolders, and all the metadata were set on both folders and documents. It was then that we noticed that the documents can no longer be viewed online and got the following error:
We then tried to open the document in Word (client), which it did open but was completely blank!
Short end of it…. we contacted MS SharePoint online support… it’s been escalated to 3 different levels… they were able to recreate this problem with just using SharePoint Designer (which I already tested out myself before contacting MS Support), and then offered the following solution:
“I did a bunch of testing with this and found that I was able to get a 2010 workflow to successfully create documents so long as I use a .docx file (and not a .dotx). I’ll detail out my repro steps below for reference. If you’d like, rather than doing steps 3-5 you could just modify the default template from a .dotx to a .docx, but either should get you to the same spot with a 2010 workflow. Will using a 2010 workflow fit your needs? Either way, I’m interested in the scenario that this might be used – if you shed some light there I might be able to offer some additional suggestions/alternatives.”
- Create new library
- Library settings > advanced settings > enable management of content types
- Create new ctype at the site level
- Add customized word document template – test.docx
- Associate new ctype to my library
- Create new 2010 workflow in SPDesigner
- Add single step to create a new item in the current list – make sure my ctype is selected & give it a title.
- Publish & run the workflow
- Word doc is generated as expected & opens in both the client & web app
The problem with the above solution is that we used Nintex Workflow, which uses the 2013 workflow, and there is no option to select using a 2010 workflow. Sure, I guess I can just recreate this in SPD with 2010 workflow, but that doesn’t solve why it all of the sudden stopped working with 2013 workflow!
Anyhow, this is still not resolved but will keep you posted with any updates.