Getting Useful SharePoint Designer Customer Workflow Activities to work in SharePoint 2013
You may or may not know about a useful solution on CodePlex called “Useful SharePoint Designer Custom Workflow Activities”. This WSP Solution has several pre-built workflow activities to extend SharePoint Designer including “Send Email with HTTP File Attachment”, “Start Another Workflow”, just to name a few.
The solution, which was built for SharePoint 2010, includes a nifty Setup file that adds and deploys the feature for you. You may notice, however, that when you migrate to SharePoint 2013 you receive the following error on your workflows which use these extended activities:
“The type or namespace name ‘DP’ could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference).”
Additionally, if you try to run the Setup file and install this Solution on a SharePoint 2013 Environment you will throw an error. Good news is there is a way around this. Bad news is, it requires editing the Web.Config and running some Powershell.
Here’s the Solution:
First, to get the Solution deployed, download the WSP from Codeplex (https://spdactivities.codeplex.com/) and save to your C drive (or wherever you want to save it).
Now do the following steps:
1. Right Click Powershell and Run As Administrator
2. Type “Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell -EA 0”. Enter.
3. Type “Add-SPSolution -LiteralPath c:dp.sharepoint.workflow.wsp”. Enter.
4. Type “Install-SPSolution -Identity dp.sharepoint.workflow.wsp -AllWebApplications -GACDeployment -CompatibilityLevel 15”. Enter
This will deploy the feature for you. Now we have to edit the Web.Config to avoid the missing assembly reference error.
1. Go to c:inetpubwwwrootwssVirtualDirectories80
2. Locate the web.config file an open in Notepad or other editor of choice
3. Find the
section and paste the following lines within it:
"
4. Find the
section and place the following lines right below the
line:
"
5. Save and Close the web.config file. You might also want to reboot the pc. Sometimes it takes a reboot for the changes to take effect. The Extended Workflow Activities should now work in your SharePoint 2013 Environment.
hello good day,
Thanks for this. im having difficulty using your steps. I downloaded a wsp file called customworkflowactivitiesproject.wsp which contains all the workflow actions in dp.sharepoint.workflow.wsp , and when publishing the workflow I get this error
The type or namespace name 'Custom' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?))
How do I get the correct namespace and assembly name to perform the same steps you did ?
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I followed all of the above. This is still not working in my 2013 SharePoint Environment. Please advise. Could not deserialize object. The type 'DP.Sharepoint.Workflow.SendEmailExtended' could not be resolved.
We are als trying to use the custom action "Copy Item Extended". This is also not working for us. It throws the same error :
"The type or namespace name 'DP' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference)."
in sharepoint 2013.
Could you republish the web config changes in steps 3 and 4 above. They appear to be missing.
This comment has been removed by the author.
View source on the page and you'll find the missing info inside PRE tags. I tried getting it out and pasting it in a comment, but it disappears in that as well.
I followed all the steps you mentioned above but still when I try to publish the workflow, it gives me error :
"(0, 10) The type or namespace name 'DP' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?))".
Is there any other way of doing it in SharePoint 2013. Any other custom build workflow activties like this CodePLex Solution. ??
Wow, great blog.Thanks Again. Cool.