persistent "Server-side activities updated" loop during Workflow publishing

Hi @Lambert reil

Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum.  

Based on the information you provided, I understand that SharePoint Designer 2013 is failing to publish SharePoint 2013 Workflows and repeatedly displays the message “The server-side activities have been updated. You must restart SharePoint Designer.” Even after clearing the ProxyAssemblyCache and WebsiteCache, the client still cannot synchronize the local workflow activity metadata with the assemblies on the SharePoint farm.

After researching similar scenarios, it appears that the behavior you are experiencing may be related to a temporary issue affecting SharePoint environments, where SharePoint Designer 2013 is unable to properly communicate with the SharePoint server when publishing or editing workflows. In some cases, this results in repeated prompts or SOAP-related errors because the local metadata cannot correctly refresh from the server.

At the moment, this type of issue has been observed in some environments, and it appears to be related to synchronization problems between SharePoint Designer and the server-side workflow components rather than a simple cache problem on the client.

Since this forum does not have access to internal systems or the SharePoint farm configuration, we can only provide guidance based on available documentation and community reports. The issue is currently being noted and investigated in similar scenarios. If there are any official updates or confirmed resolutions, they should be communicated through Microsoft documentation or community channels.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

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The looping "Server-side activities have been updated" prompt indicates SharePoint Designer 2013 cannot successfully rebuild and cache the workflow activity metadata coming from the SharePoint farm.

In this situation, the underlying cause is typically that a feature in the SharePoint farm has been added twice with two different feature IDs. When SharePoint Designer calls the workflow deployment service to retrieve activity signatures, SharePoint must enumerate all features and build a dictionary of workflow activities. A duplicate feature ID causes the dictionary build to fail with an error similar to:

System.ArgumentException: An item with the same key has already been added.

Because this call fails, Designer never completes the activity cache refresh and keeps prompting to restart.

To resolve:

1. Inspect the SharePoint farm for features that have been deployed twice under different IDs (for example, custom or third‑party solutions such as workflow add‑ons).
2. Remove or correct the duplicate feature so that each feature ID in the farm is unique.
3. After fixing the farm configuration, clear the local SharePoint Designer caches again:
   • Delete contents of %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WebsiteCache.
   • Delete contents of %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\SharePoint Designer\ProxyAssemblyCache.
   • Delete contents of %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Web Server Extensions\Cache.
4. Restart SharePoint Designer 2013 and reconnect to the site so it can rebuild the workflow activity cache successfully.

If needed, the activity cache that Designer builds for a specific site can be inspected at:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WebsiteCache\<SharePoint Site name>\<SharePoint Build version>\Activity.xml

Once the duplicate feature issue in the farm is corrected, the recursive "server-side activities have been updated" loop should stop, and workflow publishing should succeed.

References:

• Unable to create or edit SharePoint 2013 workflow in SharePoint Designer
• Workflow problems after you connect to a SharePoint Online or SharePoint Server 2013 site