Blog Archive » Publishing SharePoint Workflow with Error: “Unexpected error on server associating the workflow” in SP designer

Publishing SharePoint Workflow with Error: “Unexpected error on server associating the workflow” in SP designer

Recently, I worked on project where I created a workflow in SharePoint designer 2013, when I published the workflow I got the error message: “Unexpected error on server associating the workflow“.

After many dead ends with the Google, and other solutions which weren’t solving things for me, I came across the simple solution that restarting IIS will do the trick.  Go figure.

I’m aware this isn’t a great solution for a production environment, but if all else fails, this may very well be your next best option.

Many thanks to Louis Liang and his post here.

3 responses to “Publishing SharePoint Workflow with Error: “Unexpected error on server associating the workflow” in SP designer”

  2. Hello Colin,

    Greate solution, but for me only restart SP Design 2013 resolves the problem.

  3. Hi Colin,

    I just encountered this issue the last 2 days when the Workflow has been working completely fine for the last year.

    Restarting IIS didn’t fix the issue the first time but restarting the whole environment did fix it temporarily.

    the issue returned the next day.. Do you have any suggestion?

    Thank you!

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