Prior to the installation of SP1, I had two lists on a customer SharePoint that were successfully running a workflow. The lists are used for the IT Helpdesk. When a domain user creates an item, our team (external to the SharePoint location) gets an email. It was a default three-part workflow.

SP1 was installed due to a restore a month ago.

Last week I was asked to edit the workflow on one of the lists. I attempted to do so, and it told me that I did not have permissions to save the edited workflow. I was working as the domain admin, checked that I had farm admin, site collection admin, full control on the site, full control on the list.

Some research indicated that perhaps I should use SharePoint Designer 2010, so I did, and discovered that it's only when the "start workflow automatically when an item is created" (or changed) is checked that I get permission errors. "you do not have permission to do this operation".

At this point, my workflow is edited, saved and available, but will not run automatically when a new item is created. Some reading indicates that this was disabled somehow with SP1 for security reasons and possibly performance reasons.

My goal is to ensure that I receive timely email notifications that new entries have been entered into the list. Ideally my customer IT Manager also receives notifications when the list items status have been changed, again in a timely manner.

I do not care what method to ensure that this occurs. Please can you provide me with a recommendation and also instructions.

Thanks in advance.

After SP1 any workflows that were created using the farm admin account will not start automatically.

Try logging in as a user that is not a farm administrator, or create a specific account for yourself.

Then re-publish the workflow as the other account.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/victorbutuza/archive/2009/03/14/workflows-do-not-start.as

This technet blog would give you more info on this issue - http://blogs.technet.com/b/victorbutuza/archive/2009/03/14/workflows-do-not-start.aspx

• Edited by ambarn Tuesday, July 10, 2012 9:18 PM

Hi,

Thanks for responding. Unfortunately that did not help.

As you suggested, I created a user who was not a farm administrator, but was a site collection administrator, and has Full Control on the site. I attempted to publish the workflow via SharePoint Designer with the "start workflow automatically when an item is created" ticked, and received the same error. "you do not have permission to do this operation".

Hi ambarn,

Unfortunately, that blog post refers to SharePoint 3.0. I am working with SharePoint 2010. I am also not working with an email-enabled document library. And I don't think that I require impersonation.

Thanks for responding though.

Hi,

I faced the same issue while published the workflow using the system account in my SharePoint 2010 lab server. After I noticed that I used the system account for publishing the workflow in SharePoint designer. Then I tried to publish the workflow using different SharePoint user account instead of system account and its worked well!

For more information please check this blog

http://blogs.technet.com/b/victorbutuza/archive/2009/03/14/workflows-do-not-start.aspx

• Edited by Thumesh Thulasidharan Tuesday, September 03, 2013 9:38 AM

I was facing the same kind of problem and tried with the blog post of Victor Butuza from Technet.

But it was still not working. So I was thinking what might go wrong. 

I had created a new user as site collection owner which was not being able to kick off workflows automatically. But later I created a new user as Designer because this user group also has permission to open the site in Sharepoint Designer. 

Guess what !!! It starts working automatically once I published as a user from Designer. Also it is starting automatically when both the check box of creating new item and making a change are selected together.

May be this can be helpful to other people who are new to Sharepoint.

Enjoy exploring

I still cant get this to work. I am exporting data out of SQL via SSIS.  No matter what I change, the records are being created with a System Acct and my workflow won't fire. 

* created new userid, gave them full control on the site.

* changed svc acct / web app pool to this user.

* Login to designer with this id. create workflow - have tried with and without using impersonation.

* Made user site collection admin.

Anything I missed??

cjsigler