Visual Studio 2008 Workflow Project Wizard – SharePoint Not Installed

April 20, 2009 · 1 Comment

Problem:

I’m creating a SharePoint Sequential Workflow using Visual Studio 2008 (SP1) with .Net 3.5 SP1 installed. This is on a Windows 2003 R2 VPC with SharePoint 2007 (MOSS Enterprise) installed on the local machine for development. A Collaboration Portal is installed on a web site with host headers (portal) assigned to port 80.

When I create a new workflow project, the wizard asks for a path to the SharePoint site. I type in my url (http://portal in my case), and the project wizard fails, saying “SharePoint server not installed. Please run Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 setup.“

VS2008WF-SharePointNotInstalled

I’m logged in as the farm administrator. I thought it might be a permissions issue (my farm admin doesn’t have full rights on the domain), so I went back and gave it full Domain Admin rights in case that was the problem. Still failing!!

What the hell?

Resolution:

It turns out that the wizard does some funny business behind the scenes, calling the database directly. When I give my development account (farm admin) account full rights (dbo) to the SharePoint content database for my portal site, bingo! Works like a champ.

After only an hour or two spinning my wheels. Sigh….

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