Hello,
We've stumbled upon an issue when trying to make a site template from a site that includes a sharepoint designer workflow. The workflow is simple, it merely sends an email to people listed in a People or Group column on a discussion board list on the site. It is set to be run manually or autmatically on item creation.
When we save the site as a template through the UI, we are checking the 'include site content' box. The site template wsp is uploaded to the site collection's Solution gallery and activated. When we create new sites based on this template, everything works as expected. The workflows fire when a new item in the discussion board list and all is well.
When we need to make a change to the template, we deactivate the current site template, save the new version in the solutions gallery and discard the old one. New sites created based on the new site template still work as expected. However, existing sites based on the old version of the template have problems with the workflow. They no longer fire automatically when an Item is created. We can kick them off manually and they work just fine. Republishing the workflows also makes them fire automatically. However this isn't an acceptable solution as eventually there will be too many sites based on this template to keep up with.
I have confirmed that just deactivating the site template solution from the solutions gallery stops the workflows from autmatically firing. Reactivating that same solution does not restore the functionality. Can anyone explain what's going on here? Is there a better way to maintain and update site templates than this?