SharePoint 2013 Visual Studio Workflow not updating

Question

I created a workflow with 2 sequences. I deployed it to test and everything worked fine. I went back and added a sequence between the two. Now it doesn't seem to execute anything in the new sequence. Is there a catch to reload the workflow in SharePoint to get these to appear?

In the image below, the new sequence is GetHRContextInfo. The WriteToHistory event never fires.

Also, I can't debug the workflow now, either.

Answer 1

Did you remove & deploy a new workflow or replace it? The latter isn't a good idea because the public signature of the workflow has changed and thus any current associations are either going to error out or not pick up changes to the signature (anything considered public, such as new activities as you've done here). I consider it a good practice & recommend that you deploy a NEW workflow. If this is in development, remove the old one first (this is one of the reasons why I like testing workflows within apps as the AppWeb as automatically torn down for you between debugging sessions). If this is production, deploy it as a NEW workflow.

Answer 2

Andrew Connell's answer will work, but personally I find it a nuisance having to create a new workflow each time I want to do a minor change in the XAML/designer. Right click on your workflow project > Properties and find the sharepoint tab on the left. Then, under the "pre-deployment command line" paste this command:

tasklist /FI "IMAGENAME eq vssphost5.exe" 2>NUL | find /I /N "vssphost5.exe">NUL
if "%ERRORLEVEL%"=="0" taskkill /f /im vssphost5.exe
exit 0

Be sure to deploy from visual studio. I have been working for months using this technique - visual studio will retract / clean up, remove associations, remove workflow XAML files where necessary and re-deploy flawlessly if you end that process. Kindly note that this is a microsoft bug.