Symptoms

When importing a workflow, JIRA throws the following error:

Error parsing workflow XML: The document type declaration for root element type "workflow" must end with '>' (line:2 col: 20). Please see log for more details.

Cause

The JIRA Administrator copied and pasted the workflow XML displayed in Internet Explorer to a file. This will not work, as Internet Explorer adds '-'c characters at the begining of each tag.

Resolution

Instead of copy and pasting the XML, choose File >> Save As to save the XML content to a file.