Due to heavy load, the latest workflow operation has been queued. It will attempt to resume at a later time.

Question

I have SharePoint 2010 Enterprise running SP1. Configuration is one SharePoint server in the farm and a SQL 2008 R2 database for the backend. Our user environment is 80 users with very little load on the SharePoint server. I have the workflow timer
set to 1 minute.
I have a SPD workflow that starts manually on a form library. Whenever I publish a new version of the workflow, the next time I start the workflow it takes the full minute to finish. If I click on the workflow status before it finishes, I see the message
"Due to heavy load, the latest workflow operation has been queued. It will
attempt to resume at a later time.". After the minute completes the workflow finishes.
Here's the weird thing, the next time I start the workflow, it runs in a couple of seconds - almost instantly. I've tried up to 15 times after the inital publishing and everything seems to work fine on initiation.
Well, that would be fine for me, however, I intermintantly get this heavy load message during task processes that are running inside the workflow. It's probably less than 5% of the time. It's really frustrating though so I appreciate some help. I'm look
online and haven't found anything that describes my situation.
Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

Hi,
Before considering an additional hardware try to change following configurations for workflow:
Increase Throttle Size
Increase Batch Size
Time Out
Workflow Timer Interval
AutoCleanUpDays
Increase Throttle Size
The Workflow throttle setting controls how many Workflows can be processing at any one time on the entire server farm. By increasing the throttle it will allow the number of Workflows execution or can be initiated at a time.
Use below PowerShell command to get the current Throttle Size:
Get-SPFarmConfig |
Select WorkflowPostponeThreshold
Use below PowerShell command to set new Throttle Size:
Set-SPFarmConfig -WorkflowPostponeThreshold
100
Increase Batch Size
This is the size that determines number of events processed for a single Workflow instance. Default value is 100, but it can be range from 1 to any number.
Use below PowerShell command to get the current Batch Size:
Get-SPFarmConfig |
Select WorkflowBatchSize
Use below PowerShell command to set new Batch Size:
Set-SPFarmConfig -WorkflowBatchSize
200
Time Out
This decides the time out of the Workflow event. The default value is 5 and can be any integer. The time is in minute.
Use below STSADM command to get the current Time Out value:
stsadm -o getproperty -pn workflow-eventdelivery-timeout
Use below STSADM command to get the current Time Out value:
stsadm -o setproperty -pn workflow-eventdelivery-timeout -pv “15″
Workflow Timer Interval
This setting is applicable at Web Application level and not the farm level. The workflow timer interval specifies how often the workflow SPTimer job fires to process pending workflow tasks. This interval also represents the granularity of delay timers within
your workflow. If a timer is set to delay for one minute, but the interval timer fires only every five minutes, the workflow delays for five minutes, not one minute.
Use below STSADM command to get the current Workflow Timer Interval value:
stsadm -o getproperty -pn job-workflow -url <Web Application Url>
Use below STSADM command to get the current Workflow Timer Interval value:
stsadm -o setproperty -pn job-workflow -pv “Every 10 minutes between 0 and 30″ -url <Web Application Url>
Here is the url for reference :
http://praveenkasireddy.wordpress.com/2013/06/14/workflow-due-to-heavy-load-the-latest-workflow-operation-has-been-queued-it-will-attempt-to-resume-at-a-later-time/