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ellan1537's avatar
ellan1537
Iron Contributor
Apr 12, 2019
Solved

SharePoint Designer 2013 Workflow Platform is not available

When I tried to create a 2013 workflow for SharePoint Online team site using SharePoint designer 2013, it shows a below error message. For some of the sites, it's working good.

 

"The option for the SharePoint 2013 Workflow platform is not available because the workflow service is not configured on the server. Please contact your server administrator."

 

Any help is greatly appreciated!

  • ellan1537 To use SharePoint Designer on a SPO site, you have to modify the 'Add and Customize Pages'  permissions through Powershell. Your error might be caused by this - we see it when we do 2010 workflows, which is set up differently than 2013 of course. But thought I'd mention it.

     

    To tell if that's the case, go to your site and on the gear icon go to 'Site Permissions', then go to 'Advanced Site Permissions'.

    There's a button in the ribbon to check permissions for a user - put in your name.

     

    If you see a section that mentions 

    Deny - Add and Customize Pages, etc, etc, then you need to update the permission and do it for every site where you want to use SPD.

     

    In PowerShell:

     

    # Install-Module -Name Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell -RequiredVersion 16.0.8029.0

    $cred = Get-Credential

    # set security so can use 2010/2013 workflows
    # have to do this to every site we want to use SPD workflows o, including all classic sites
    # also, this is what gives us the content editor web part in classic sites. We don't have to turn on publishing.

    Connect-SPOService -Url https://YOURTENANT-admin.sharepoint.com -credential $cred
    Set-SPOSite -Identity https://YOURTENANT.sharepoint.com/sites/YOURSITENAME -DenyAddAndCustomizePages $false

    # you can check that it worked with
    $site = Get-SPOSite -Identity https://YOURTENANT.sharepoint.com/sites/YOURSITENAME
    $site.DenyAddAndCustomizePages

    Disconnect-SPOService

     

3 Replies

  • Kelly_Edinger's avatar
    Kelly_Edinger
    Bronze Contributor

    ellan1537  are you an admin for your O365 tenant? In the classic SharePoint Admin Center > Settings, there's a checkbox to block SharePoint 2013 workflows. May be worth taking a look.

  • Robin Nilsson's avatar
    Robin Nilsson
    Bronze Contributor

    ellan1537 To use SharePoint Designer on a SPO site, you have to modify the 'Add and Customize Pages'  permissions through Powershell. Your error might be caused by this - we see it when we do 2010 workflows, which is set up differently than 2013 of course. But thought I'd mention it.

     

    To tell if that's the case, go to your site and on the gear icon go to 'Site Permissions', then go to 'Advanced Site Permissions'.

    There's a button in the ribbon to check permissions for a user - put in your name.

     

    If you see a section that mentions 

    Deny - Add and Customize Pages, etc, etc, then you need to update the permission and do it for every site where you want to use SPD.

     

    In PowerShell:

     

    # Install-Module -Name Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell -RequiredVersion 16.0.8029.0

    $cred = Get-Credential

    # set security so can use 2010/2013 workflows
    # have to do this to every site we want to use SPD workflows o, including all classic sites
    # also, this is what gives us the content editor web part in classic sites. We don't have to turn on publishing.

    Connect-SPOService -Url https://YOURTENANT-admin.sharepoint.com -credential $cred
    Set-SPOSite -Identity https://YOURTENANT.sharepoint.com/sites/YOURSITENAME -DenyAddAndCustomizePages $false

    # you can check that it worked with
    $site = Get-SPOSite -Identity https://YOURTENANT.sharepoint.com/sites/YOURSITENAME
    $site.DenyAddAndCustomizePages

    Disconnect-SPOService

     

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