You are seeing the following status when attempting to approve a Workflow in Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 R2 [Pending approval by ; due <xx/xx/xxxx>]

We recently ran into an issue in Workflow 2.0 where you will see a status very similar (the date is the exceptions) to the one in the screen shot below. We have identified that this issue is caused when your Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) differs from the NetBIOS name in your environment. The reason you are seeing this status is because Workflow 2.0 uses your FQDN when determining the approver of a Workflow, but you are actually logging in using the Windows NetBIOS name. Please see the example below for further explanation.

EXAMPLE:

Your FQDN = yourdomain.com

Your NetBIOs = domain.com

You can see how you are logged into Windows by using the whoami command at the command prompt. You will see that you are logged in as domain\<userid> (NetBIOS name), which is where the problem lies in this domain environment. GP looks to Windows for the credentials to use to determine the approver of the Workflow. It sees that you are logged in as domain\<userid>. In the backend the database has a record written in the WFI10004 table that is looking for yourdomain.com\<userid> in the WorkflowTaskAssignedTo column. Therefore Workflow does not know who the approver is so it leaves the name blank.

We are looking to resolve this issue in a later release of GP. Unfortunately I’m unable to tell you which one it will be at this time. Please be sure to refer to the release notes for Dynamics GP to see when the issue has been addressed. In the meantime, there is a workaround which you will see below.

WORKAROUND:

Run the update script below against the WFI10004 table in the Company database where you are experiencing the issue. After you run the update statement, you should be able to go into the document and see the person that is supposed to approve the Workflow. You will have to run the statement each time a Workflow is submitted.

UPDATE WFI10004 SET WorkflowTaskAssignedTo = 'NetBIOS Name\<userid>' WHERE DEX_ROW_ID = '<DexRowID>'

NetBIOS Name           = In the example above this would be domain

Userid                         = The Windows User ID of the Approver

DexRowID                  = References the column in the WFI10004 table called DEX_ROW_ID

Below is a screenshot of what the status should look like. In this case, my approver’s User ID is WC.

NOTE:

If you are setting up a test environment and you have a local user originating a Workflow and the approver is a domain user, you will also see the same issue.   You need to be sure that all Workflow users are in Active Directory.

Hopefully this will help you understand why you are seeing this status and what you can to prevent it until the fix is released.