Help getting vRO working again - cannot add a workflow element to my schema

[kdewitt]

Help!

I recently started building a custom workflow in vRO  6.0.2.2707387 and ran into the following issue.  My vRO is configured with vRA 6.2.1.  It was working perfectly up until today when I added my vRA cafe host as a REST host (I'm building a workflow to automate the build of vRA blueprints.)  After this point, I can drag elements into my workflows, sort using the filter for the "Choose workflow" form entry, however, when I try to select a workflow item, the dialog box simply hangs and I cannot "select", "close" or even do anything further in the vCO client.  I'm running the vCO client on a Mac (OSX Yosemite.)

I've checked and my vCenter license in valid "permanent" in the vCO Configuration (8283)...  Does anyone have an idea for why my vCO would mis-behave?  or a possible fix to get it back to working again?  I've tried restarting the configuration as well as the configuration service however this doesn't seem to help.  I can still re-open the vCO client, connect to my vCO server.  Browsing all tabs works but when I try to edit the schema of my workflow, again, I can drag an element into the schema but when I go to select a workflow, it hangs again.

Only way to start over is to Force Quit the vCO application using Finder.

[iiliev]

Is this happening only when you try to drag a workflow item elements? Could you try to drag eg. Scriptable task element?

It sounds like when you select the workflow item element, another UI dialog/window gets open and goes somewhere on background where you cannot work with it. I'm not a Mac user and I'm not sure if the opened windows can be re-arranged using the keyboard, but you can try to press Esc or whatever key is used on Mac OS to cancel/close dialogs/windows.

[kdewitt]

Thanks for your reply Ilian!  ESC key actually did dismiss the window so I'm back to the edit my workflow window again.  So at least that allows me to get back again from the hung state.  Yes, it only happens with either adding workflow or action elements.  Scriptable tasks add and I can edit those with no problems.  So, indeed, it does seem like maybe there's another window popping up that I can't see but I'm not able to locate any.  I was using 2 monitors and now have switched back over to 1 and when I try to re-add the workflow element and search, it still gives me the same problem.  Cannot select a workflow item and unresponsive until I hit escape key!

[iiliev]

Most like, this is the window which allows the user to 'promote' input/output parameters of the workflow item being added as input/output parameters of the parent workflow.

There are few things you can try:

• If you are starting vRO client using Java Web Start, you can try to install the client application. Open vRO appliance home page (https://vroip:8281/vco), click on 'Download Orchestrator Client Installable' link, download the file vRealizeOrchestratorClient-macosx-6.0.2.zip, extract its content and install the application.
• If you have several Java versions (Java 7 or 😎 installed on your machine you can try to start the client with them.
• You can try to deploy just released vRO 6.0.3

[kdewitt]

I'm currently using the vCO client for mac which I have installed.  It's connecting correctly so I'm not sure if maybe I should try this from Windows to see if there are any different results.  I know that Java recently updated to 1.8 update 60.  Would this be causing an issue??

I'm going to try to install the local vco client on a windows VM in Fusion and see if I get better results.

[kdewitt]

Ilian, you are on it my man!  Thanks very much for your hints.

Ok, I just got it to finally work correctly in Firefox on windows 2012 R2 (BTW - I cheated to get firefox to work correctly and I'll include that cheat below.) 

Back to my Mac (Yosemite.) - I tried to get it to run correctly in both the .jnlp java webstart.app (via Firefox - using the cheat below!) on my Mac as well as the OSX client app.  Neither of those worked correctly.  As Ilian had noted, there is a popup that asks "Do you want to add the activity's parameters as input/output to the current workflow?" and there is a button on the far right = "Setup" along w/ the smallish "x" to dismiss this.

You can see this on the screenshot below.... (windows 2012 r2)

So I went back into my vCO client on Mac and went back to editing my workflow's schema.  Dragging a workflow element into the schema does provide the popup "Choose workflow" window and I am able to sort using the filter.  In my case sorting on "request".  But as noted above in the initial inquiry, I can't do anything at this point.  I have noticed at one point when dealing with trying to make the popup "Choose workflow" window go away (by hitting the "esc" key as Ilian had suggested) that there was a thin, long white "ghosted" area that seemed to hang around and then disappear.  So I believe I'm dealing with some sort of incompatibility with Mac and Java version - maybe?  I still don't have an answer for how to fix this yet on my Mac but for now, I'm able to continue working on my Windows 2012 VM.

Also - just in case you're wondering how I got vRO to work with Firefox?  Well, I cheated.  I lowered the security settings (following the below hint) and I was able to ignore the ephemeral Diffie-Hellman key issue on the latest Firefox.  Not sure how to do this on Chrome but hope this helps someone.

The Cheat for getting Firefox to work with vRO 6 on Mac OS X

For some users, when they attempt to launch programs that rely on Java, their Mac will not know to use Java to open the .ed file. This issue is caused by an OS update that Apple released that changed the way Java files were associated and how they launch. To correct this issue, please follow the steps below.

1. When trying to launch a Class live session or open an archive you will download a file with one of the following extensions: '.jnlp' or '.ed' 
2. CTRL + click on the downloaded file.
3. Select Open With.
4. Click on Other....
5. Change the Enable option to All Applications.
6. Check the Always Open With box.
7. Using the browse window, navigate to Macintosh HD\System\Library\CoreServices\Java Web Start.app.
8. Click Open.

The program associated with Java should now launch. If it does not, your session may have timed out. If this occurs, close your browser, re-open it and try to access the program associated with Java.

[kdewitt]

Another point to make is that I recently had to download the Java JDK in order to get the new CloudClient to run on my Mac.  I wasn't careful and downloaded jdk-8u60-macosx-x64.dmg.  Now the JDK is not the JRE but apparently when you install the JDK, you get the new JRE environment as well.  But I'm not a developer so not entirely sure about that.

I should have tried to just download the 1.7 JDK and see if I can get that to work.  At this point, I'll likely have to uninstall Java altogether, then download the 1.7 JDK and try to install it and run my vCO client again.

[Mnemonic]

Thank you for posting. I had the same issue, and I figured out how to solve it. (VMware this is really not pretty. PLEASE FIX!)

I am trying to add a Async Workflow in the location shown in the picture:

But when I do, the client freezes, but using escape I get get it going again. I found out that I was able to add it to the workflow, just not in the lower right of the workflow, so if I drag a workflow element to another place, then the popup box shows itself. Not in the place you would expect, but anyway.

I hope it helps someone else.

/Brian.