Setting up your Workflow Proxy account for 2010 legacy workflows in Project Server 2013
By blurg64
You may be aware that Project Server 2013 can now use demand management workflows built in SharePoint Designer and the new Azure based Workflow Manager. But you may not be aware that the old 2010 ‘legacy’ workflow capabilities are also still present and available for you to leverage.
This is particularly important for organisations that may be upgrading from Project Server 2010 and have invested in demand management workflows and do not want to redevelop or significantly refactor their workflows for Project Server 2013 and the new Workflow Manager.
However, in setting up my Project Server 2013 instance I ran into an issue where I couldn’t register the workflow proxy account details for my PWA instance in Central Administration with what seemed like the correct credentials, resulting in the following error:
The specified Workflow Proxy User Account does not exist
Why is this the case? Well, under the covers, SharePoint 2013 (and Project Server 2013) the default authentication mode has changed from classic to claims. In fact it’s no longer possible to create a claims web app via the GUI any more, only PowerShell. If you have a claims based web application hosting PWA, you need to enter the workflow proxy in claims format. So instead of a domain\username format credential, enter the account in the correct claims format i.e. i:0#.w|domain\username.
One other thing I wanted to share when looking at 2010 legacy workflows in Project Server 2013, they will log to the ULS as Legacy Workflow Infrastructure, instead of the usual Workflow Infrastructure, so make sure you are looking in the right place 