The Sitecore element does not go into edit mode; any suggestions for troubleshooting?

Question

I have several Sitecore elements (the template of which is associated with the approval workflow) that will not enter edit mode when you click "Edit" on the "Overview" tab. The same workflow has been used elsewhere on the site successfully (the site is over 3 years old), but clicking the "Edit" button in this case does not seem to affect the state of the workflow.

I have included verbose logging, which provides a lot of detail, but does not indicate anything error conditions. I compared how this template was configured with other "working" templates for a couple of days, and everything looks kosher, but, of course, I miss something obvious.

EDIT: The item (s) in question are imported by the data provider, and I have confirmed that for some reason Sitecore does not set the default Workflow and Status fields with a default value. This seems to be part of the problem.

EDIT 2: Following the steps in this topic http://sdn.sitecore.net/Forum/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=45991 to use Sitecore Rocks to update all items to the correct Workflow state, but there was no update. For some reason, workflow changes are not saved for imported items.

EDIT 3: clicking on the "Edit" button on the "Home" tab displays the message "This item is not currently part of the workflow."

Answer 1

Are the default values ​​set correctly? There is only one element for this template. Standard values?

As a rule, almost every time I come across a situation where X works with certain elements, but not with others ... this is a permission problem. I hope you tested this as an administrator?

Sorry, my suggestions are so vague, but it's hard to be specific here. We need more information from you ... When you click "Edit", what exactly do you expect? I'm not quite sure what you mean by "edit mode" here. In the Content Editor, all elements are essentially in edit mode all the time ... In my configuration, when I click "Edit", I just lock the element. It does not change the state of the workflow or create a new version.

These items come from the data provider ... Does your data provider handle locks / unlocks correctly? I know that you can use a data provider without implementing the entire API.