Workflow Admin Troubleshooting
What this helps you do
Work through common workflow admin configuration problems before escalating to a technical administrator or support.
Template not visible or unavailable during upload
Check the Published Workflows versus My Workflows tab, search text, category filter, Show only active, draft status, published status, Active flag, owner visibility, and workflow template permissions.
For upload selection, confirm the template is both published and active. Also check upload configuration, user permissions, document category behavior, and whether the user is in the expected tenant/environment.
Workflow not starting
Check that the document has a valid folder, required metadata is complete, required expiry or workflow metadata is present, the selected template is active and published, every step has a valid assignee, and the user has permission to start or apply the workflow.
If the workflow started before recent template changes, it may still use the earlier configuration.
Wrong or missing approver
Check the step assignee type: user, role, department, department head, or metadata email. Then verify selected users, role spelling, department membership, department head setup, metadata email field value, and whether the current template version is the one used by the live workflow.
Default folder not found
Search by folder name and check the full path. Subfolders can be returned by the picker when the folder search endpoint returns them. If the folder is still missing, check folder permissions, department scope, folder status, and the /lifecycle/search/folders search behavior with a technical admin.
SLA, stats, or supervision issues
If SLA does not update, check step SLA days/hours, business calendar, warning threshold, escalation chain, department assignment, and background reporting timing. If Workflow Stats do not update, use Refresh and confirm reporting jobs have run.
If Workflow Supervision is empty, clear filters, check Active Tasks, Exceptions, and Closed / Cancelled, confirm there are matching workflows, and verify the user has workflow task administration permission.
When to escalate
Contact a technical admin or support when permissions look correct but admin pages are hidden, folder search does not return known folders, workflow instances are stuck without a valid assignee, exception recovery is unclear, license-gated export is expected but unavailable, or background jobs are not updating SLA and stats.
Related Emii questions
- "Why is workflow not starting?"
- "Why is the wrong approver assigned?"
- "Why is SLA not updating?"
- "Who should fix workflow configuration issues?"