SharePoint - AlterTask method problem

During the development of a simple sequential workflow in SharePoint I came across "OnTaskChanged not firing" issue.

I had this problem already couple times, so I tried to check the usual causes of this problem:

1) Usually in sequential workflow you hava a CreateTask or CreateTaskWithContentType activity, which is followed by OnTaskChanged activity in the loop.

Correlation token, TaskId, TaskProperties of these two activities have to match - so your task can be "wired" together with OnTaskChanged activity.


2)The last time I was having this issue was that one of my assemblies in GAC was not up to date. In that time I found this in my LOG:


System.TypeLoadException: Could not load type 'BaseClassesLibrary.Library.MailLibrary' from assembly 'BaseClassesLibrary, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=cfc77ab1c27103f4'. at RequestWorkflowASP.ITApproveActivity.ITApproveTask_MethodInvoking(Object sender, ExternalDataEventArgs e) at System.Workflow.ComponentModel.Activity.RaiseGenericEvent[T](DependencyProperty dependencyEvent, Object sender, T e) at System.Workflow.Activities.HandleExternalEventActivity.RaiseEvent(Object[] args) at System.Workflow.Activities.HandleExternalEventActivity.System.Workflow.ComponentModel.IActivityEventListener.OnEvent(Object sender, QueueEventArgs e) at System.Workflow.ComponentModel.ActivityExecutorDelegateInfo`1.ActivityExec...


So I was searching for something similar(Missing any assemblies)….no result.

So finally after hours of digging I found the solution. The task is displayed as ASP page. In the code-behind of this page I change the SharePoint task item (because taks is a simple SPListItem) by calling the SPWorkflowTask.AlterTask(...) method.

//Create the hashtable which will be populated to ExtendedProperties of task AfterProperties
Hashtable taskHash = new Hashtable();

//Fill the values of the HashTable
taskHash["hwDescription"] = txbHWDescription.Text;
taskHash["swDescription"] = txbSWDescription.Text;
taskHash["částka"] = txbPrice.Text;

//Call the AlterTask method to populate AfterProperties
SPWorkflowTask.AlterTask(_spListItem, taskHash, true);

The problem was in the line: taskHash["částka"] where I have used some Czech alphabet characters to specify the property. SharePoint couldn't alter the task correctly, so my OnTaskChanged event didn't fire.

I try to avoid using the Czech alphabet in my code and this was just "temporary" solution, which somehow stayed there. If I would keep some coding best practices and never left temporary solutions, I could have saved myself couple hours of time :).

Strange is the fact, that I didn't receive any exception in the SharePoint LOG.
Just the OnTaskChanged was not firing.