SharePoint Designer workflow emails sometimes fail to send

Hi. I have had no luck following this up with support so posting to this group for visibility in the SharePoint Online team :)
I have built a SharePoint Designer workflow that sends a notification email when a new item is created on a list. Generally this works fine, but about 20% of the time I find that the email fails to send. I get this error message reported by the workflow:
The e-mail message cannot be sent. Make sure the outgoing e-mail settings for the server are configured correctly.
After some research I thought this was due to me using a SharePoint Online Group in the To field: so I changed the To field to a hard coded email address... but I still got the same problem periodically.
There is definitely something odd going on within the guts of SharePoint Online. Please can someone investigate this?
Thanks,
MylesCatch me on Twitter

Hello Myles,
Custom workflows are currently unsupported by Microsoft Online, however I am not sure why you are using a workflow to send a email notification when a new item is created as an alert can be setup to achieve this.
If this information is not helpful, and find no resolution, you should consider these resources as well:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/FX100646991033.aspx Designer help
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepointdesigner/default.aspx Designer blog
Hope this helps,
Justin Bakelaar – BPOS Support

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Whenever you see a reply and if you think is helpful,Vote As Helpful! And whenever you see a reply being an answer to the question of the thread, click Mark As Answer

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http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sharepoint/en-US/f8fa2a11-9f74-4dd2-b277-21ce872fdcb2/can-we-add-rich-text-editor-to-the-sharepoint-designer-2010-workflow?forum=sharepointcustomizationprevious
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in different rows, causing extra blank
spacein the RTF file.
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Regards,
Aries
Microsoft Online Community Support
Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

SharePoint Designer Workflow 'Failed on Start', SP Logs has WorkflowValidationFailedException, works ok when recycle IIS App Pool and restart

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Please 'propose as answer' if it helped you, also 'vote helpful' if you like this reply.

Cannot set the email from address (reply-to) in SharePoint Designer workflow

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Hi,
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ItsMeSri SP 2013 Foundation

Hi ,
According to your description, my understanding is that you want to send email in workflow only when the item is created and the status is New.
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Best Regards,
Wendy
Forum Support
Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help. If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact
[email protected]
Wendy Li
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SharePoint 2010 Workflow: Email alert when item is due to expire

Hi Guys,
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Hello,
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http://mysharepointchronicles.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/sharepoint-list-with-workflow-email-reminder-set-to-send-30-days-from-created-date/
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/sharepointcustomizationprevious/thread/9c728338-b0fe-45a0-9377-a774e551d529
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Hemendra: "Yesterday is just a memory,Tomorrow we may never see"
Whenever you see a reply and if you think is helpful, click "Vote As Helpful"! And whenever
you see a reply being an answer to the question of the thread, click "Mark As Answer
Please feel free to unmark answer if does not resolves your problem.

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Hi,
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https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=40B702A9FB117DD!136&authkey=!ABtMg5n3OtPakCg&v=3&ithint=photo%2cPNG
More reference:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1249366/start-sharepoint-workflow-x-days-before-expiry-date
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How to see/use Target Audience column in SharePoint Designer Workflow (SharePoint 2013 Online, Designer Workflow)

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I'm attempting to use use the Target Audiences field in a SPD 2013 workflow, in this case just attempting to log the value to history for testing purposes. This is failing saying the column does not exist.
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Thanks so much Lisa, for the clarification.
I understand what you have explained, and have seen several similar explanations that have lead to my confusion. Can you elaborate a bit, maybe for the sake of future information seekers?
I understand that audiences can be defined using the rules operations in Central Admin, but it seems another standard function is to just directly assign existing SharePoint groups. I think this is what you mean above, but this is also the point of
my misunderstanding.
In this particular setup I have only used existing SharePoint groups with no audiences defined in Central Admin. List Item A has a target audience of SharePoint group X, just that simple of a setup.
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Based on the following posts, I was under the impression this may be possible (but obviously not fully clear and thus I posted this):
https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sharepoint/en-US/5eb984ba-55a3-4da7-a904-c34b2fece84c/how-do-i-set-the-target-audience-using-sharepoint-designer-workflow
http://www.sharepoint-tips.com/2011/01/setting-target-audiences-with-code.html
(sorry about lack of links, my account must still require verification)
So in SPD, I set a simple action such as "Log Current Item:Target Audience to history" (note the I am able to select target audience in SPD like any other field with no errors). At this point I am assuming everything is valid as SPD is treating
the field like any other string field. When executed the error in the above post comes up.
So to confirm your explanation, this is not supported? Even though the field is available for selection by design, it is not capable of use and known to produce errors in all cases of its use? The first post above is 100% wrong and you cannot
use SPD to set/view the target audience field? The second post is also wrong as it seems to present the fields as available for alteration using string concatenation?
If in fact the field is present by design, but also impossible to use by design, is this potentially a bug as the field is not supposed to be available if it will always produce the error when used with no error in SPD during compile?
Thank you again for the reply and I hope we might be able to provide a rock solid answer to this for future seekers.

SharePoint Designer workflow emails sometimes fail to send

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