SSIS Connection not found in package

I determined that this problem was a corrupt connection manager by identifying the specific connection that was failing. I'm working in SQL Server 2016 and I have created the SSISDB catalog and I am deploying my projects there.

Here's the short answer. Delete the connection manager and then re-create it with the same name. Make sure the packages using that connection are still wired up correctly and you should be good to go. If you're not sure how to do that, I've included the detailed procedure below.

To identify the corrupt connection, I did the following. In SSMS, I opened the Integration Services Catalogs folder, then the SSISDB folder, then the folder for my solution, and on down until I found my list of packages for that project.

By right clicking the package that failed, going to reports>standard reports>all executions, selecting the last execution, and viewing the "All Messages" report I was able to isolate which connection was failing. In my case, the connection manager to my destination. I simply deleted the connection manager and then recreated a new connection manager with the same name.

Subsequently, I went into my package, opened the data flow, found that some of my destinations had lit up with the red X. I opened the destination, re-selected the correct connection name, re-selected the target table, and checked the mappings were still correct. I had six destinations and only three had the red X but I clicked all of them and made sure they were still configured correctly.

For package developed in Visual Studio 2015, I found i must supply a value for the parameter (which would be the case when you deploy or run on different server) which sets the connection manager's connection string instead of using the design time value. This will suppress the error message. I think this could be a bug.

dtexec /project c:\mypath\ETL.ispac /package mypackage.dtsx /SET \Package.Variables[$Project::myParameterName];"myValueForTheParameter"

I tested this without or without parameterize the connection string, which is at the project level. The result was the same: i.e. I have to set the value for the parameter even thought it was not used.

I had the same problem.

I use project level connection managers and my packages run correctly in SSDT but when I deployed them and execute them through a job with sql server agent, I get "Connection not found" errors.

So I deploy the project and then the problem was solved, when you use project level connection managers but just deploy a single package from that project, and you call package through sql server agent, it could not recognize your connection managers so you should determine package level connection managers or you should first deploy your project.

This happened for me: SSIS-package not created by me started at some point behaving unexpectedly, like giving that Connection not found -error and my task was to fix it though. When I looked at Job Step Properties under SQL Agent jobs, it showed no Configurations in use and Data sources were exact they should be. But, error message pointed to something different. Then I opened .dtsx file in question and noticed that there IS package conf. set and in that package conf. file is connection name set wrong. So my advice is to compare .dtsx and .dtsConfig -files side by side.