We’re on TC 13.1 and experiencing a recurring issue with our Engineering Change Notice workflow. ECNs are getting stuck at the reviewer approval step, and the assigned reviewers aren’t receiving email notifications. The workflow shows the task as assigned in the system, but users never get the notification email, so they don’t know there’s a pending approval.
This is causing significant approval delays - some ECNs sit for days until someone manually checks their workflow inbox. I’ve verified the SMTP server config in preferences.xml and it looks correct. The workflow template has email notification actions configured at the reviewer step. I’ve also checked that all reviewers have valid email addresses in their user profiles.
The strange part is that some notifications work fine (like workflow initiation emails), but the reviewer step notifications consistently fail. Has anyone dealt with selective email notification failures in ECN workflows?
I checked the SMTP authentication and it’s configured correctly - we’re using the same settings that work for workflow initiation emails. I opened the workflow template in Workflow Designer and the reviewer step does have an email notification action attached, referencing a standard notification template. Is there a way to test if the template itself is causing the issue? Also, should I be looking at workflow template actions beyond just the email notification?
Another thing to check - open your workflow template and look at the notification action’s properties. There’s a setting for notification delivery method (email, inbox, or both). If it’s set to inbox-only, that would explain why users aren’t getting emails even though tasks are assigned. Also verify the notification template itself - sometimes the email body template references properties that don’t exist on the ECN object, which causes the email generation to fail. You can test this by creating a simple test workflow with the same reviewer step and notification action, then process a test ECN through it while monitoring the workflow server logs.
Look at the performer assignment in your workflow template. If you’re using a group or role as the performer, TC might be having trouble resolving individual email addresses from that group. The initiation email works because it’s typically sent to the workflow initiator (a specific user), but the reviewer notification needs to resolve multiple potential recipients from a group. Try changing the reviewer step to assign to specific users instead of a role, and test if notifications work. If they do, then your issue is with group/role email resolution, not SMTP configuration.
The fact that initiation emails work but reviewer emails don’t suggests the issue is with how the reviewer is being resolved at that workflow step. Check if your workflow is pulling reviewers from a role assignment or from the ECN object’s properties. If it’s using dynamic role resolution, the email address might not be getting populated correctly. Also, verify your user directory sync - if users are managed through LDAP/Active Directory, there might be a sync issue where the email attribute isn’t being updated in TC even though it exists in AD. I’d recommend checking the workflow server logs around the time an ECN reaches the reviewer step to see if there are any email sending errors being logged.
I’d check the email queue in TC. There’s a notification queue that holds pending emails, and if that queue has errors or is backed up, it can cause selective delivery failures. You can query the notification queue table to see if reviewer notification emails are getting queued but not sent. Also, some SMTP servers have rate limiting that could cause issues if multiple ECNs reach the reviewer step simultaneously. Check your SMTP server logs to see if emails are being rejected or if TC isn’t even attempting to send them. The workflow server logs on the TC side should show whether the send attempt is happening.
I’ve seen this before. Check if your SMTP server requires authentication and if those credentials are properly configured in TC. Also verify that the email template for the reviewer notification step is correctly defined in your workflow template. Sometimes the template references a missing or malformed email template object, which causes the notification to fail silently without throwing an error in the workflow.