SharePoint Designer workflow 2013 exception

Question

We have a workflow that creates a task using SharePoint workflow. But for a particular user this exception occurs:

RequestorId: 0a1ef050-8eb4-1c0b-0000-000000000000.
Details: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the workflow instance.
Exception details:
System.ApplicationException: HTTP 401 {"error":{"code":"-2147024891, System.UnauthorizedAccessException","message":{"lang":"en-US","value":"Access denied. You do not have permission to perform this action or access this resource."}}} {"Transfer-Encoding":["chunked"],"X-SharePointHealthScore":["0"],"X-SP-SERVERSTATE":["ReadOnly=0"],"DATASERVICEVERSION":["3.0"],"SPClientServiceRequestDuration":["50"],"SPRequestGuid":["0a1ef050-8eb4-1c0b-807d-e44d955bef27"],"request-id":["0a1ef050-8eb4-1c0b-807d-e44d955bef27"],"X-FRAME-OPTIONS":["SAMEORIGIN"],"MicrosoftSharePointTeamServices":["16.0.0.4678"],"X-Content-Type-Options":["nosniff"],"X-MS-InvokeApp":["1; RequireReadOnly"],"Cache-Control":["max-age=0, private"],"Date":["Fri, 27 Sep 2019 04:39:19 GMT"],"Server":["Microsoft-IIS/10.0"],"WWW-Authenticate":["NTLM"],"X-AspNet-Version":["4.0.30319"],"X-Powered-By":["ASP.NET"]} at Microsoft.Activities.Hosting.Runtime.Subroutine.SubroutineChild.Execute(CodeActivityContext context) at System.Activities.CodeActivity.InternalExecute(ActivityInstance instance, ActivityExecutor executor, BookmarkManager bookmarkManager) at System.Activities.Runtime.ActivityExecutor.ExecuteActivityWorkItem.ExecuteBody(ActivityExecutor executor, BookmarkManager bookmarkManager, Location resultLocation)

Answer 1

Check if the user has the required permissions on all the resources used in your workflow.

For example, if the user has minimum contribute permission on the task list where it is creating an item.

Answer 2

Depending on what this workflow is doing and to what kind of information (is it sensitive, do you need to restrict who can start the workflow?), you might like to consider using either an Impersonation Step or an App Step for Sharepoint 2010 or 2013, respectively.

For a 2010 workflow the Impersonation Step means that the workflow runs under the user account of the person who last published the workflow - typically this is the Sharepoint Administrator or someone with sufficient privileges. The App Step I must say I have not used, please read the link, it does something similar to the Impersonation Step but does not depend on another user's profile to run.

Answer 3

From the error message, it is a permission issue. Please make sure the user account which triggered the workflow has at least Contribute permissions on the list and the related Tasks list.

If the user didn't have permission on the entire web site, you also need to deactivate the feature "Limited-access user permission lockdown mode" at site collection level.

SharePoint : Workflow Permission – Access Denied

In addition, as a workaround, you can also set the workflow to run with elevated permissions via Impersonation Step in SharePoint 2010 platform or App Step in SharePoint 2013 platform.