SharePoint Workflows: Access Denied when starting manually

Permissions needed to start Workflow manually

I had a list workflow in SharePoint Online that wouldn't start for users with Edit and/or Contribute permissions on the list.

This was a workflow the user would start manually, but before it started the user would get to a page saying Access denied.


I then tried to give the users permissions on Workflow History and Workflow Tasks list, but still no luck. The page it was trying to open was layouts/15/workflow.aspx


The solution:
Give the users Contribute permissions to the site itself.

This may implicate that you will have to break permissions on other Lists you don't want these users to have that level of access to, but I have not found another way to bypass this issue.


Many times this issue will not surface because users are Members of your site and then by default they will inherit this permission. But if you are tightening up security, using AD groups etc for your permissions then you can suddenly find yourself in the same situation. Then just google here ;)