Form not rendered due to misconfiguration of State Service

When you create an internet web application using SharePoint 2010 you are probably using the Publishing Portal site definition or a custom site definition / site template based on the Publishing Portal.

And if you are just like me, setting up your SharePoint environment as clean as possible, with the minimal required services activated you will run into the following problem.

When you have created a publishing page which has the approval mechanism turned on, and you publish it by clicking on the “Publish” button at the ribbon or the right contextual menu in the pages list the following error is generated:

“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.”

This error is caused by the workflow which is in desperate need of the state service. And as you can guess, that state service is not running. The state service does not appear under the “manage services on server” and “manage service applications” in Central Administration. There are two ways to activate the state service:

using PowerShell cmdlets

By using PowerShel cmdlets you are able to start the state service on for your web application.

$stateName = “State Service”
$stateDBName = “StateServiceDB”
$stateDB = New-SPStateServiceDatabase -Name $stateDBName
$state = New-SPStateServiceApplication -Name $stateName -Database $stateDB

New-SPStateServiceApplicationProxy -Name “$stateName Proxy” -ServiceApplication $state -DefaultProxyGroup

using the Configuration Wizard

The second way is using the Configuration Wizard. Yes, i know, that “damn” thing you never want to run after an installation because it activates all the services. But…. It is possible to deselect all the services except for the state service. Also already installed services will be grayed out.

The disadvantage of this is that you do not have any control over the database name and the service application name.

Solved

If you now have a look at the Service Applications in Central Administration you will notice that the state service is running and attached to the web application. so you now of to go and try again to publish the page.

Instead of the nasty error you will get the workflow start screen.