PDF Workflow Activities are not displayed in SharePoint Designer 2013

This article applies to ‘Workflow Manager’ (SP2013 workflow engine) Actions not being inserted or available. When you experience this problem with the SP2010 Workflow engine, then see this Knowledge Base Article.

If the workflow activities that come with the Muhimbi Document Converter for SharePoint are not displayed in the SharePoint Designer 2013 workflow editor, or are displayed and cannot be inserted, then please follow these troubleshooting steps

Document Converter 8.0 or newer

Version 8.0 comes with full support for the Workflow Manager introduced in SharePoint 2013, and also available in newer SharePoint version. If you cannot see the Muhimbi Workflow Actions in SharePoint Designer or are unable to insert them then please check the following:

• Enable the ‘Muhimbi Document Converter Workflow Manager Actions’ Feature on the (sub) site your workflow is targeting.

• Clear SharePoint Designer’s cache by closing SharePoint Designer and deleting the relevant SharePoint site folder located at “%appdata%..\Local\Microsoft\WebsiteCache”.

Document Converter versions older than 8.0

The incorrect workflow engine has been selected. SharePoint 2013 (and later editions) comes with two different workflow engines. The default workflow engine, which is the same as the SP2010 workflow engine, and the optional ‘Workflow Manager’ ( Which is not compatible with SharePoint Foundation, only Microsoft’s commercial SharePoint Server product). Older versions of the Muhimbi Document Converter only support the 2010 workflow engine, so please make sure you select that workflow engine when creating workflows in SharePoint 2013.

If you prefer to use the SP2013 Workflow Manager then you can invoke a SharePoint 2010 Workflow using the ‘Start List Workflow’ Activity. This SharePoint 2010 workflow does all the PDF Conversion work and can take parameters from the SP2013 workflow.