Trobleshooting 'Failed to connect to Process Manager to refresh application properties' in Workflow Designer

Products

• Workflow Solution

Issue/Introduction

In Workflow Designer when trying to add Application Properties to a project - Project Properties > Application Properties tab - and Application Properties are not available, an error message is displayed in Workflow Designer but no errors are logged in log files or Log Viewer.

How to troubleshoot the issue to find a cause?

Failed to connect to Process Manager to refresh application properties

Environment

Workflow Solution 8.x

Resolution

Here is the sequence of web service requests behind the Workflow Designer retrieval of Application Properties. Please go through these in a browser at least for one Application Properties Profile to see if this works on your server. If it works for one, going through the rest might be necessary to determine which Application Properties profile is causing a problem.

Notes:

• A valid SessionId can be retrieved from the name of the last file (without .LBEMSG2 extension) in:
  %ProgramFiles%\Symantec\Workflow\Data\ProcessManagerFileStorage\processmanagerfilestorage-lbme.processmanagersessions
• There does not appear to be authentication for this web service.

Sequence:

1. [ServerName]/ProcessManager/Profile/ProfileService.asmx > GetProfileDefinitions
   Parameters:
     - sessionID: sessionID
     - referenceTypeID: Application Properties
   Returns:
     - List of All Application Properties Profiles, GUIDs are the important bit here, used in next calls
2. [ServerName]/ProcessManager/Profile/ProfileService.asmx > GetProfileValueDefinitions
   Parameters:
     - sessionID: sessionID
     - profileDefinitionID: GUID of Application Properties profile
   Returns:
     - Profile definition.
3. [ServerName]/ProcessManager/Profile/ProfileService.asmx > GetProfileDefinitionDefaultInstance
   Note: This occurs on opening the Application Properties tab but not always when clicking 'Refresh' button
   Parameters:
     - sessionID: sessionID
     - profileDefinitionID: GUID of Application Properties profile
   Returns:
     - Default instance name. Usually 'Default'
4. [ServerName]/ProcessManager/Profile/ProfileService.asmx > GetUniqueFieldValuesForProfileDefinitionID
   Parameters:
     - sessionID: sessionID
     - fieldName: InstanceName
     - profileDefinitionID: GUID of Application Properties profile
   Returns:
     - Instance names.

Steps 2-4 are repeated for each Application Properties Profile listed in the result of Step 1.