Fixing the form cannot be rendered error in SharePoint 2013 workflows

I recently encountered an error when trying out the standard SharePoint 2010 workflows in a newly installed SharePoint 2013 environment. When opening the workflow initiation form it gave me an error “The form cannot be rendered. This may be due to a misconfiguration of the Microsoft SharePoint Server State Service. For more information, contact your server administrator.”

Apparently my SharePoint 2013 did not have a State Service Application configured – to create a new State Service Application you are required to use PowerShell since the option is not available in the interface. Take a look at New-SPStateServiceApplication cmdlet documentation on Technet

   1: $serviceApp = New-SPStateServiceApplication -Name “State Service Application”

   2: New-SPStateServiceDatabase -Name “SharePoint_Service_State” -ServiceApplication $serviceApp

   3: New-SPStateServiceApplicationProxy -Name “State Service Application Proxy” -ServiceApplication $serviceApp -DefaultProxyGroup

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,administration,troubleshooting,microsoft,SP2013,SharePoint+2013