May 25 2017 12:08 PM
I have tested and confirmed on multiple SharePoint 2016 environments, all with Workflow Manager 1.0, the following issues for users who do not have contribute permissions to the parent web/site:
It does not seem to matter if the user has contribute rights to the list/library itself, they must have those permissions at the web level. If I increase the user permissions to contribute at the parent web, workflows are now enumerated for the user - and they are able to initiate a workflow set to start automatically.
Note that this behavior only affects the 2013 Workflow (WFM 1.0) platform, not 2010-based workflows.
Is this behavior by design/to be expected, or is this a bug?
I have included some screenshots to help illustrate the issue:
Before granting Contribute rights - no workflows visible, nothing to start
After granting Contribute rights, same item - can now start workflow and see the previous (errored) workflow
Uploading a new item after given Contribute rights - WF starts automatically and completes
May 25 2017 10:40 PM
May 26 2017 06:52 AM
Thanks for the reply! I can confirm that by manually editing permissions on the Workflow History list, users can initiate a workflow which is set to start automatically on item creation. However, they still cannot enumerate available workflows, and they cannot manually start them.
Sep 06 2017 05:00 AM
Nov 26 2017 03:34 PM
Hi Yaswanth
This is most likely by design and you will have to use the workaround of workflows start automatically. you could always make another yes/no column "start workflow" then put a condition of the workflow when it automatically starts to check this is a yes.
The only other solution would be to add the users to the web with contribute and break permissions on all other lists and remove them. This would not be a great solution.
Kind Regards
Alex Bunning