NINTEX - Fixing "User Cannot Be Found" in SharePoint 2010 Workflow Settings - Nintex Workflows

Fixing "User Cannot Be Found" in SharePoint 2010 Workflow Settings

*****Do not delete and try to republish the workflows after deletion. This will cause many issues and the related Workflow Tasks from the "Workflow Tasks" library will get deleted automatically.*****

SharePoint Designer Workflows
We started getting this error overnight on our SharePoint 2010 farm. Workflows stopped working, we couldn't republish list workflows, and we couldn't access the Workflow Settings page for any list or library on the entire site collection. The following error would appear:

"User Cannot Be Found"

Opening SharePoint Designer at the site collection level, we discovered that the Globally Reusable Workflows and Reusable Workflows were owned by user accounts that had been deleted. In order to fix this we used SharePoint Designer to open every workflow and clicked Publish with a static user account (i.e. the Farm service account or App pool service account). After republishing, all started working again.
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Files

However, it seems as though files stored under the OLD profile in SharePoint do NOT automatically get updated with new owner settings when this happens.  Again, in our case, I was trying to run the Copy To SharePoint on files uploaded last April, before the change.  NONE of them would copy; all would fail with the above error string.  Yesterday with Nintex Support on the phone, we tried an experiment by downloading and re-uploading the affected files.  Once that was done, they could be copied without error. 

This post is just to make you all aware that IF you have made any AD profile changes like the one here, it *may* cause issues with the Copy to SharePoint action.  

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Nintex Workflows

You can resolve the issue using SharePoint Designer. You need to run the SharePoint Designer with the account listed in Farms Administrator & Site Collection Administrator Groups.

You can also use Command Prompt to start the SharePoint Designer using the below Command

C:\>runas /profile /user:dev\devacct "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\SPDESIGN.EXE"
Enter the password for dev\devacct:

When you see the above error while you are using Nintex Workflows, you need to use SharePoint Designer and go to the location >> sites/corporate/_catalogs/wfpub/

Click on "Approval - SharePoint 2010", you will see the below listings. check in and check out the item for which you see the username which doesn't exist (found that the out of the box user was set to a claims based format e.g. "0;#id")

After checking in the item, REFRESH the page, you will see the sign changed after which the workflows started working.


Check all the root Site Collections and clear the usernames which has issues.

Reset and Fix Incorrect or Wrong Password for Windows XP Mode (XPMUser)

Log On with Default Administrator Account

It’s possible to try accessing Windows XP Mode with the default administrator account named “Administrator”, which has been made to only display in Safe Mode. By default, there is no password for Administrator account, so it can be used to reset the password of the password of other accounts.

To do this, please perform the steps below:

1. On Windows XP Mode window, click on Tools -> Disable the Integration Features.
2. Restart the Windows XP Mode.
3. When the Boot Menu appears at startup, press F8.
   Note: Keep pressing the F8 key until the Windows Startup menu appears.
4. On the Windows Advanced Options Menu, select Safe Mode and press ENTER.
5. Log into Windows by using the Administrator account and password.
   Note: The password is blank by default unless you already set a password.
6. After logging into Safe Mode, click Start, go to Run, type in nusrmgr.cpl and press ENTER.
7. Choose the user you want to modify and Click Reset Password.
8. Set a new password.
9. Click Advanced tab, Click Advanced button.
10. Click Users.
11. Choose the user you want to modify in the right pane. Right it and Click Properties.
12. Check and tick the box of Password never expires.
13. Click OK.
14. Quit the settings and restart Windows XP Mode to the normal mode.
15. When log on to Windows XP Mode, remember to check the box Remember my credentials so that you no need to enter the password again.

"An error has occurred while accessing the SQL Server database or the Office SharePoint Server Search service. If this is the first time you have seen this message, try again later. If this problem persists, contact your administrator.”

I recently had an interesting issue where we were getting the following errors accessing the User Profiles and properties link within SSP.

“An error has occurred while accessing the SQL Server database or the Office SharePoint Server Search service. If this is the first time you have seen this message, try again later. If this problem persists, contact your administrator.”

Notice in the below picture that the schedule fields are blank.

When accessing “Configure Profile Import”, you will see the following error:

An error has occurred while accessing the SQL Server database or the Office SharePoint Server Search service. If this is the first time you have seen this message, try again later. If this problem persists, contact your administrator.

Also, within the Configure Profile Import page, you will see the following error within Incremental Import Schedule & Full Import Schedule:

“Unable to obtain schedule information. Please verify that the job server is up and connected to the farm.”

As a result, profile imports are unable to be scheduled.

This can happen when one of the hidden SSP timer jobs is deleted via pwoershell command (stsadm –o deletessptimerjobs) or accidentally while mis-handling the server re-boot hierarchy. Specifically in this case, the User Profile Incremental Import Job timer job was missing accidentally while mis-handling the server re-boot hierarchy.

 You can run the following from the bin directory to validate the missing one of the SSP timer jobs.

stsadm –o enumssptimerjobs –title “nameofssp”

SSP Timer Job Id="d29a1e4b-268d-4bb8-90b9-003935407f6b" Display Name="User Profile Change Job"
SSP Timer Job Id="80395702-10aa-46bb-91f8-014bedaf7184" Display Name="Audience Compilation Job"
SSP Timer Job Id="3565824b-d79a-4b5e-9af9-06653c8564b0" Display Name="User Profile Full Import Job"
SSP Timer Job Id="a7e410e3-abdf-4833-b9fe-a2e8b2863182" Display Name="Distribution List Import Job"
SSP Timer Job Id="1fad8b5e-6b2b-48f3-ae79-aa17afb5ca11" Display Name="User Profile Change Cleanup Job"
SSP Timer Job Id="1zfl8b5a-9g3g-59q9-wr41-mm22afb7kia1" Display Name="User Profile Incremental Import Job"

In this particular case, the User Profile Incremental Import Job was missing. Unfortunately, the only supported resolution is creating a new SSP or restoring the SSP from backup. I've seen some external public documentation suggesting a fix which includes directly editing the associated SharePoint SSP database. Please be aware that any direct edits to the database is strictly unsupported by Microsoft. 

Time Clock Plus - Database Connection Settings

Below are the settings for Web Edition of the Time Clock Plus on Server.

1. Open the TCPCONN.XML existing in C:\TimeClockPlus-WebEdition-30\tcp-we-30\Config  using Notepad.

and

ConnectionOptions in TCPCONN.XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ConnectionOptions xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <Port>0</Port>
  <Pooling>true</Pooling>
  <NetworkLibrary />
  <MaxPoolSize>0</MaxPoolSize>
  <Encrypt>false</Encrypt>
  <ConnectTimeout>10</ConnectTimeout>
  <ServerName>dev\dev</ServerName>
  <DatabaseName>TCPlus</DatabaseName>
  <UserId>Username</UserId>
  <Password>Password</Password>
  <Integrated>false</Integrated>
</ConnectionOptions>

2. Update the ServerName, DatabaseName, Username and password correctly.

Open the TCP Client and verify that you are connected to correct database. You can see the server name in the right -down corner.
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Below are the settings for Client Edition of the Time Clock Plus for Users.

Open the TCPCONN.XML existing in C:\Program Files\TimeClock Plus 6.0  using Notepad.

The rest is the same process as above.

Change from "Detail View" to "List View" of for all the Groups in the Site Collection.

On Site Collection, go to Site Actions >> Site Settings.
Under User Permissions, click on People and Group. On the default Group, go to Settings >> List Settings.

Open the List view and make it default. You can also add more columns like Email.

You can see the List Settings,  when your Account listed  "Site Collections Administrators".