Workflow Manager installation - my experience

Sunday, 7 April 2013

EDIT 13.5.2013. In case you can't add or remove host in Service Bus farm, re-check that entries in HOSTS file are commented out (item 4. in list below) as that could cause this behavior.

At first, I planned to write long blog post describing my experience during installation of Workflow Manager on my development VM. However, in order not to repeat others I decided to write only quick summary of specific steps that I made in order to successfully install Workflow Manager.

  1. Add service account that will be used to run workflow in local administrators group on SharePoint server (on server where Workflow Manager will be installed) 2. Make sure that service account has access to SQL Server in order to access Workflow and Service Bus databases 3. Log in to Windows using service account during installation and configuration of Workflow Manager and stay there until Workflow configuration ends. 4. Make sure that you remove(comment out) all entries inside HOSTS file, especially those pointing to 127.0.0.1 5. Use "DOMAIN\username" in this format when entering service account information. 6. After entering required information into Workflow Manager Config Wizard, do not execute configuration, but instead export PowerShell scripts and use Workflow Manager PowerShell console for performing configuration. 7. In case you encounter errors, leave the workflow farm (here you can use Workflow Configuration Wizard) and delete all Workflow and Service Bus Databases 8. Make sure you pair Workflow Manager with SharePoint on the end.

Errors I had to resolve during configuration, before I learned all this above are (if you have those, see list above): 1. "The Fabric Data Collection Agent is disabled for this deployment." 2. "ServiceBus Message Broker Service is starting"

Resources: http://blog.sharedove.com/adisjugo/index.php/tag/workflow/ http://www.spjeff.com/2013/03/27/configuring-workflow-manager-1-0-on-sharepoint-2013-screenshots/ http://developers.de/blogs/damir_dobric/archive/2012/09/18/servicebus-message-broker-service-is-starting-and-starting.aspx http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/SP2013-Workflow-Getting-Around-Installation-Issues-Creating-and-Executing-Workflows