How to create a workflow to add permissions to items in a list?

Last Update: December 21, 2018

Apply for: SPARK Workflow for SharePoint 2013/2016 and Office 365

Suppose you have a list named "List1". A new list workflow named "SetPermissions" has been created on this list to grant permissions to items' creators only when adding new items in order to make them able to only view and edit their items. For example, if you have 4 items in the list: item1, item2 were created by user1 and item3, item4 were created by user2, then user1 can show item1 and item2, whereas user2 can show item4 and item5.
After adding many items to this list, the business owner requests to make all members in a specific group able to view all items (old and new items) in this list. For this reason, a group named "List1ViewGrp" has been created and a new list workflow named "UpdatePermissions" has been create over this list.
Here are the steps on how to establish the above scenario.

  1. Step #1: In this step we will update the "SetPermissions" workflow to make all members in the "List1ViewGrp" group able to view the new added items in the list.
    1. Open "SetPermissions" workflow to update. For more details on how to update a workflow, refer to Modify an existing workflow use case.
    2. Update the below "SetPermissions" workflow to make all members in "List1ViewGrp" group able to view the new items being added as follows:
      How to create a workflow to add permissions to items in a list1.png
    3. Reconfigure the "Item Permissions" activity as follows:
      How to create a workflow to add permissions to items in a list2.png
    4. Publish the workflow by clicking on the Publish button in the workflow ribbon.
  2. Step #2: In this step we will create a list workflow named "UpdatePermissions" to make all members in the group "List1ViewGrp" able to view all of old items in this list.
    1. Create a list workflow named "UpdatePermissions". For more details on how to create a list workflow, refer to Create a list workflow use case.
    2. Drag "CAML Query", "For Each" and "Item Permissions" activities onto the workflow canvas and drop it onto a design node as follows:
      How to create a workflow to add permissions to items in a list3.png
    3. Configure the "CAML Query" activity as follows:
      How to create a workflow to add permissions to items in a list4.png
      Note: A workflow variable "VarItemsID" of type collection should be created to store the list values "IDs" in the collection.
    4. Configure the "For Each" activity as follows:
      How to create a workflow to add permissions to items in a list5.png
      Note: A workflow variable "VarItemID" of type integer should be created to store the value in when looping through each value in the collection.
    5. Configure the "Item Permission" activity as follows:
      How to create a workflow to add permissions to items in a list6.png​
    6. Publish the workflow by clicking on the Publish button in the workflow ribbon.
    7. Now go to "List1" and run the workflow. For more details on how to run a list workflow, refer to Run a list workflow use case.
    8. After completing running the workflow, you will see that the view access permissions has been granted to "List1ViewGrp" group.