Symptoms

When submitting a workflow the user receives an error:

(ProjectName) SmartObject Server Exception: Authorization failed. User: 'K2:DOMAINuser' Action: 'Publish SmartObject' . SmartObject: TestSMO]
 

Diagnoses

Most likely this user does not have smartobject publishing permissions on the K2 Server. This account is going to be set as a new admin account so there are some settings on the K2 Server that are not in place in order for this account to actually function as an Admin.
 

Resolution

This user does not have required permissions to publish smartobjects so this was added through workspace. You can manually add in this account and an ability to publish smartobjects through the workspace management console. In management console you will expand out the server -> SmartObjects ->Security -> SmartObjects Administration -> then click on add. Clicking add will pop up a window to search for a user, search for the user K2:Domainuser and click okay. Now you should see the user in the list, please check the publish smartobject and you are probably going to want the delete smartobject option selected as well. Save.

Other permissions needed on the K2 Server include giving the account the proper workflow rights on the server. This is also changed in workspace under the Workflow Server -> Server Rights, this is a global change. Usually admins have the Admin and Export options checked. If the preference is to have this account as admin on specific processes then you would need to go to Workflow Server -> Processes -> Choose Process -> Process Rights. Here any rights added are only on the selected process level.