SharePoint (and Project Server) Shenanigans

Consider the following situation, you have a column in a list or library with a name such as “Workflow” , someone come along and creates a workflow called “Workflow” and associates it with your list, in isolation that is no problem. However you do now have 2 columns in your list / library view called “workflow” one is your column and the other is the status of your workflow.

In your list description you still only have one column called “Workflow”

But your end users are saying that when they are creating views there are 2 columns called “Workflow” and don’t know which to choose.

The most simple thing to do would be rename the Workflow, the only effect this should have is to change the name of your status column (personally I have not seen other side effects of doing this)

So in SPD we change the Workflow name, hit Save then Publish and nothing happens !, so we do it again and nothing happens, no changes in SharePoint, so we change the Workflow name then hit Rename  then hit Save & Publish and finally it works, how odd !