Fixed: SharePoint Designer Error - Unexpected error on server associating the workflow

 

When publishing a SPD workflow which contains more than 6 Approval process steps, it gives the following error :

How ever if you try 5-6 times, you might end up publishing it. But sometimes it won’t work.

Even though Microsoft had mentioned that their 'February 2011 CU for the SharePoint 2010 Product Family' would fix most of the errors, this was not included among them.

But there’s a work around to fix the above issue.

Open the ‘web.config’ which associate with the site collection that you are publishing the workflow. (E.g: ‘C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\<Port>’)

Find the following entry :

<httpRuntime maxRequestLength="51200" />

And change it to :

<httpRuntime maxRequestLength="51200" executionTimeout="300" />

Save the ‘web.config’ file and restart the web site from IIS.

Now you can publish the workflow without any issue.