Corey Roth [MVP]

Now, I have always known there are some oddities when accessing a SharePoint server by IP and as a practice I tend to avoid it.  I am sure the issue I am about to describe relates to alternate access paths in some way, but I thought I would tell people about it in case someone else runs into it.  The scenario I have is quite simple.  I have a custom workflow attached to a document library that executes whenever a file is created or modified.  What I discovered was that when I was accessing the site on my virtual machine by name, the workflow was executing.  When I tried to reach it from the host machine by IP address, it did not execute.  It didn't give an error or anything.  It simply did not start.  The reason I was accessing by IP to begin with is because the server name wasn't resolving on my host machine and I was being too lazy to fix it.  Next time, I won't make this mistake.  Workflows will not automatically start when you specify the server by IP address in your browser.