Installation for SharePoint 2013 / 2016 / 2019 / SE

Install

Before installing Workflow Actions Pack ensure that Workflow Manager is configured for your farm. Workflow Manager allows to create and execute SharePoint 2013 workflows. See Workflow Manager configuration guide.

Download setup file and run it on one of the servers in your SharePoint 2013 / 2016 / 2019 / SE farm as Farm Administrator. Follow the wizard steps.

After that you have to activate Web Application level feature Plumsail Auth Service for this please open your central administration site and navigate to Application Management section, click on the link Manage web application, choose your using web application, click to the Features button on the ribbon and activate the Plumsail Auth Service feature.

SharePoint Application Management

Next, you have to activate feature on your site. Navigate to the site, open site settings and select Manage site features.

SharePoint Manage Site features

Find feature called Plumsail Workflow Actions Pack and click Activate

SharePoint Activate Feature

Now, you can find the following actions in SharePoint Designer under Plumsail section

SharePoint Designer new Actions

Install license

  • Buy Workflow Action Pack for SharePoint 2013 / 2016 / 2019 / SE license for each web front-end server.

  • Download Server ID Generator. You can find download link in the e-mail message with order number from our online store. Run it on WFE server of your farm.

  • Copy generated keys and send them to sales@plumsail.com . Specify your WFE server names and the order number in the email message.

  • We will generate licenses for you and will send them to your e-mail within one day.

  • Place received .license files in the root folder of all SharePoint web-applications on WFE-servers according to generated keys.

    If you use port 80 it is usually here: c:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\80\

Uninstall

Run setup file and choose Remove, then finish the installation wizard.

RemoveWFActivityPack

To properly remove the application, you need to deactivate Plumsail Action Pack Auth Service feature first on your web application. In the case, when you do not deactivated the feature, you may get the following error: Server Error in ‘/’ Application.. If you received this message on load your site, you may use one of two ways to solving this problem:

  1. Open web.config file (by default this file locate in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\[Web_App]\web.config) and remove all references to Plumsail.WFServices.

  2. Run setup file and install Workflow Action Pack again. Then, deactivate web application feature and try to remove the solution again.

Upgrade

If you have any workflows in state “in progress” that uses the product, please stop Workflow Manager Backend Service on WFE. It will help to avoid workflow interruption.

Firstly, you have to deactivate Plumsail Workflow Actions Pack feature at the site level. Download setup file and run it on one of the servers in your Sharepoint 2013 / 2016 / 2019 / SE farm as Farm Administrator. Choose Upgrade and follow the wizard steps.

Upgrade workflow actions pack

Find the feature called Plumsail Workflow Actions Pack and click Activate

SharePoint Activate Feature

Manual Upgrade

  1. If you have any workflows in state “in progress” that uses the product, please stop Workflow Manager Backend Service on WFE. It will help to avoid workflow interruption

  2. Download WSP file and save it to C:\temp\ folder on WFE

  3. Please deactivate Plumsail Workflow Actions Pack feature at the site level

  4. Run the following command via SharePoint Management Shell on WFE server:

Update-SPSolution -LiteralPath C:\temp\Plumsail.ActionsPack.OnPremises.wsp -Identity Plumsail.ActionsPack.OnPremises.wsp -GACDeployment -Verbose
  1. Activate Plumsail Workflow Actions Pack feature at the site level

  2. Run Workflow Manager Backend Service on WFE

Upgrade workflows

Sometimes after upgrade WSP package, you also need to upgrade your workflows. To upgrade workflows you need to navigate to Site Settings -> Plumsail Workflow Actions and click ‘Upgrade’ button for workflows where you see it. After upgrading of workflows you need to clear Sharepoint Designer cache and open it again. You may need to reopen SharePoint Designer second time, it is specific of SharePoint Designer.

SharePoint upgrade workflows step 1

Known Issues

SharePoint Designer issues

SharePoint Designer stores cached workflow actions, that is why after solution upgrade you may need to perform few actions. You need to clear SharePoint Designer 2013 cache, otherwise it can show you the error message because it uses old cached version of workflow actions. To clear cache you need to execute following command from the command line as administrator on your PC and reopen SharePoint Designer:

rmdir "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\WebsiteCache\" /s /q
rmdir "%APPDATA%\Microsoft\SharePoint Designer\ProxyAssemblyCache\" /s /q

Or you can download and execute the bat file.

After clearing the cache and running SharePoint Designer you may need to close and open SharePoint Designer one more time, then the error should disappear. We also recommend to install recent updates for SharePoint Designer 2013. This will help to avoid annoying error when configuring workflows.

If you use SharePoint Designer on the same server where has installed Workflow Manager and see the message Server-side activities have been updated, please check the link.

We also recommend to install recent updates for SharePoint Designer 2013. This will help to avoid annoying error when configuring workflows.

Workflow Actions Pack feature activation issues

If for some reason activation/deactivation of Workflow Actions Pack feature is failed via SharePoint user interface you can try to activate/deactivate it via PowerShell.

Workflow Actions Pack feature ID is

22bb2cee-2403-4b7c-818e-9078b11a218b

Use this ID in the next command with Force flag

Enable-SPFeature -identity 22bb2cee-2403-4b7c-818e-9078b11a218b -URL https://somesite -f

Also you can disable the feature using the command

Disable-SPFeature -identity 22bb2cee-2403-4b7c-818e-9078b11a218b -URL https://somesite -f

Note

You can find more information about the PowerShell commands in the Microsoft documentation.