Debugging Workflow – A case study

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Debugging Workflow – A case study

By neel January 29th, 2008

Quite a few readers have asked me about real time scenarios of various posts that I have written. I try to explain with examples so that it is easy to understand but I think putting it in real working scenario will make more sense and more understanding. So, today I am going to narrate a story how I debugged a workflow error that we faced in our Development environment .

One fine day I an email with the following content in it

Error Code: (SBL-BPR-00187)–(SBL-BPR-00100)–(SBL-EXL-00151)–(SBL-SCR-00141), Error Message: Error updating business component at step ‘Update Sales Stage’.(SBL-BPR-00187)
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This error is returned when the workflow is executing the Siebel Operation business service.(SBL-BPR-00100)
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What I could figure out from this mail was that there is an error in a workflow which has a step named ‘Update Sales Stage’ but I had to find answer to the questions like

Which Workflow?
From where it is being invoked?
Why it is failing?

So to find the RC (Root Cause) this is what I did.

Went to Administration Server > Server Management > Tasks

Queried for Workflow process manager (WPM) records

Only realized that the log level is too low to get any information

So Went to Administration Server > Server Configuration > Components to increase the log level

Queried for WPM component and increase the log level for the following components

Workflow Definition Loading
Workflow Engine Invoked
Workflow Process Execution
Workflow Step Execution
SQL Tracing

Went again to Administration Server > Server Management > Tasks. Now I could see enough details of workflow process to figure out which Process is failing.

The name of the process was GEAE Update Quote Sales Stage

So, I went to tools had a look at workflow only to know that It was trying to update the opportunity sales stage and there was a script on the BC that was firing and preventing the status from being updated hence resulting in the workflow failure.

This post is supposed to give you a direction on which you can proceed. It will be only with experience that you will know what exactly needs to be done in different situations.