I created a custom SharePoint 2010 workflow using SharePoint designer for a 2013 SharePoint environment.  My workflow needs to read data from an external list, and works flawlessly when the workflow is started manually.  However, when my workflow is started automatically via an email being sent to the document library it cannot pull from the external list.  It is showing SharePoint\External as the workflow initiator.  To try and rule out a security problem I granted All Authenticated Users full permissions on the External Content Type.  All SharePoint service accounts have been setup under active directory and I have also tried giving them full access to the External Content Type as well.  My backup plan was to use an impersonation step to encapsulate the reading of the External List but this is not working either!!!

I have also tried this scenario out with the External Content Type setup as a Secure Store Service and BDC Identity...

Help me Please!

Hi,

From your description, my understanding is that you create a 2010 platform workflow for a SharePoint 2013 document library which is reading data from an external list. The workflow works when started manually, while workflow is not working when started automatically via an email being sent to the document library.

Set the IIS Application Pool account with full control to external content type. From the following article, we can see that workflow accessing BCS will always run as service account(typically the IIS Application Pool account), even under impersonation step:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bcs/archive/2010/01/20/using-sharepoint-workflows-with-business-connectivity-services-bcs.aspx

Best Regards,

Lisa Chen