CtrlTeams troubleshooting

Most CtrlTeams problems are not problems with CtrlTeams. They are one of the three applications failing on its own, and the fastest route to a fix is working out which one before reading anything else.

Each application also has its own troubleshooting section: CtrlSync, CtrlTMS and PDS.

Check these first

1. Is each of the three licensed? Each validates its own licence at startup even though CtrlTeams is bought as one bundle, and an expired one disables that application quietly.
2. Does each report a clean status? M-Files Admin shows each application’s own validation under the vault’s Applications node.
3. Has the Entra client secret expired? CtrlSync and CtrlTMS usually share one, so both stop at the same moment.
4. Which application has stopped? Follow the path an object takes and find the first step that did not happen — the table below.

Which application has stopped

Follow the path an object takes and find the first step that did not happen.

What you see	Nothing happened at	Look at
A team exists in Microsoft 365 but there is no object in the vault	Discovery	CtrlTMS: its schedule, its Graph credentials, and whether the team matches its filters
The object exists but no files ever arrive	Synchronisation	CtrlSync: whether the connection is active, and whether the connection’s class is one it is configured to handle
Files arrive but the team’s members are never updated	Membership	CtrlTMS: whether the team’s Active Property is Yes, then its member configuration and the person object it resolves users through
A project will not enter the baseline state	Template validation	PDS: the refused transition names what the template is missing
A project is in the baseline generation error or activation error state	Background generation or upload	PDS: the reason is in the project’s Error Property
A project will not enter the activate state	Activation	PDS: it requires a SharePoint URL on the project, and a configured, licensed CtrlSync
Folders were created but the documents are empty or missing	Upload	CtrlSync, then the document object templates PDS built the artefacts from

Settings that disagree

When two applications appear to be looking at different objects, they usually are. These are the settings that have to name the same thing, and the symptom when they do not.

The connection object type or class. CtrlTMS creates connections of one class; CtrlSync synchronises another. Objects appear in the vault and are then ignored forever. Compare CtrlTMS’s object creation settings against the classes named in CtrlSync’s connection configuration.

The Graph URL property. PDS checks one property for the project’s URL before activation; CtrlSync reads another. The project enters the activate state, then the background activation fails because CtrlSync finds no URL, and the project moves to Activation Error with the reason in its Error Property. Compare PDS’s SharePoint URL Property with CtrlSync’s Graph URL.

The active property. The workflow sets one boolean; CtrlSync reads another. Connections look active in the vault and are skipped on every run. Compare the state action on the activation transition against CtrlSync’s Graph configuration.

The person or employee object. CtrlSync’s employee configuration and CtrlTMS’s member configuration resolve M-Files accounts through different properties. The same user is attributed differently depending on which application wrote the value.

Licensing

Each of the three validates its own licence at startup, even though CtrlTeams is bought as one bundle. An expired or missing licence disables that application’s event handlers quietly — the application still starts, and the log records the reason.

PDS refuses to activate a project when CtrlSync is not installed, configured and licensed, and says so in the message on the failed transition. That message is about CtrlSync’s licence, not PDS’s.