Impersonation Step workflow action had been deprecated in SharePoint Designer 2013. !!!
Yet , In SharePoint Designer 2013, you can choose the SharePoint 2010 Workflow platform during creation and still have all of those workflow actions available.
Even though we have the option to choose 2010 workflow and go for Impersonation Step, the best option is to leverage the App Step in 2013 workflows.
A SharePoint Designer workflow will run under the permissions of the user who started the workflow. Certain steps of the workflow may require the user to have more permissions than you intend to grant them. If elevated permissions are not used, the workflow will not work, and you will likely receive an access denied error or the workflow will not execute at all.
In 2010 workflow we had Impersonation Step to overcome this. when the workflow enters the Impersonation Step, it runs under User's account who published the workflow.
Drawback in Impersonation Step :
The one drawback of using an Impersonation Step is that the workflow could suddenly stop working if anything were to happen to the user account that created and published the workflow. The purpose of the Impersonation Step is to run any actions inside this step as the user who authored the workflow. If the account that creates and publishes the workflow is edited in some way, possibly with a permission change on the site or a password change, then you have a broken workflow.
This has been overcome in the 2013 SharePoint Designer's App step:
Any actions you now place within this App Step can read from and write to all items in the site. And this does not depend on the user's account who has published the workflow.
So the actions that runs under the App Step will run under "System Account".
To get more details about "System Account" in SharePoint , check my another post here.
To Enable App Step in workflow, follow the below procedures
Now you can see App step in your 2013 designer workflow.
Happy SharePointing.....
Yet , In SharePoint Designer 2013, you can choose the SharePoint 2010 Workflow platform during creation and still have all of those workflow actions available.
Even though we have the option to choose 2010 workflow and go for Impersonation Step, the best option is to leverage the App Step in 2013 workflows.
A SharePoint Designer workflow will run under the permissions of the user who started the workflow. Certain steps of the workflow may require the user to have more permissions than you intend to grant them. If elevated permissions are not used, the workflow will not work, and you will likely receive an access denied error or the workflow will not execute at all.
In 2010 workflow we had Impersonation Step to overcome this. when the workflow enters the Impersonation Step, it runs under User's account who published the workflow.
Drawback in Impersonation Step :
The one drawback of using an Impersonation Step is that the workflow could suddenly stop working if anything were to happen to the user account that created and published the workflow. The purpose of the Impersonation Step is to run any actions inside this step as the user who authored the workflow. If the account that creates and publishes the workflow is edited in some way, possibly with a permission change on the site or a password change, then you have a broken workflow.
This has been overcome in the 2013 SharePoint Designer's App step:
Any actions you now place within this App Step can read from and write to all items in the site. And this does not depend on the user's account who has published the workflow.
So the actions that runs under the App Step will run under "System Account".
To get more details about "System Account" in SharePoint , check my another post here.
To Enable App Step in workflow, follow the below procedures
- Go to Site Settings.
- In the Site Actions section, select Manage site features.
- Locate the feature called Workflows can use app permissions, as shown in the figure, and then click Activate.
Now you can see App step in your 2013 designer workflow.
Happy SharePointing.....
