In sharepoint designer's workflow editor how do I get the workflow initiators username?

Question

In Sharepoint designer's workflow editor I wish to retrieve the username/name of the work flow initiator (i.e. who kicked it off or triggered the workflow) - this is relatively easy to do using 3rd party products such as Nintex Workflow 2007 (where I would use something like {Common:Initiator}) - but I can't seem to find any way out of the box to do this using share point designer and MOSS 2007.

Update

It does not look like this rather obvious feature is supported OOTB, so I ended up writing a custom activity (as suggested by one of the answers). I have listed the activities code here for reference though I suspect there are probably a few instances of this floating around out there on blogs as it's a pretty trivial solution:

public partial class LookupInitiatorInfo : Activity
{
    public static DependencyProperty __ActivationPropertiesProperty =
        DependencyProperty.Register("__ActivationProperties",
        typeof(Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWorkflowActivationProperties),
        typeof(LookupInitiatorInfo));

    public static DependencyProperty __ContextProperty =
        DependencyProperty.Register("__Context", typeof (WorkflowContext),
        typeof (LookupInitiatorInfo));

    public static DependencyProperty PropertyValueVariableProperty =
        DependencyProperty.Register("PropertyValueVariable", typeof (string),    
        typeof(LookupInitiatorInfo));

    public static DependencyProperty UserPropertyProperty = 
        DependencyProperty.Register("UserProperty", typeof (string),
        typeof (LookupInitiatorInfo));

    public LookupInitiatorInfo()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
    }

    [Description("ActivationProperties")]
    [ValidationOption(ValidationOption.Required)]
    [Browsable(true)]
    [DesignerSerializationVisibility(DesignerSerializationVisibility.Visible)]
    public Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWorkflowActivationProperties __ActivationProperties
    {
        get { return ((Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWorkflowActivationProperties)(base.GetValue(__ActivationPropertiesProperty))); }
        set { base.SetValue(__ActivationPropertiesProperty, value); }
    }

    [Description("Context")]
    [ValidationOption(ValidationOption.Required)]
    [Browsable(true)]
    [DesignerSerializationVisibility(DesignerSerializationVisibility.Visible)]
    public WorkflowContext __Context
    {
        get { return ((WorkflowContext)(base.GetValue(__ContextProperty))); }
        set { base.SetValue(__ContextProperty, value); }
    }

    [Description("UserProperty")]
    [ValidationOption(ValidationOption.Required)]
    [Browsable(true)]
    [DesignerSerializationVisibility(DesignerSerializationVisibility.Visible)]
    public string UserProperty
    {
        get { return ((string) (base.GetValue(UserPropertyProperty))); }
        set { base.SetValue(UserPropertyProperty, value); }
    }

    [Description("PropertyValueVariable")]
    [ValidationOption(ValidationOption.Required)]
    [Browsable(true)]
    [DesignerSerializationVisibility(DesignerSerializationVisibility.Visible)]
    public string PropertyValueVariable
    {
        get { return ((string) (base.GetValue(PropertyValueVariableProperty))); }
        set { base.SetValue(PropertyValueVariableProperty, value); }
    }

    protected override ActivityExecutionStatus Execute(ActivityExecutionContext executionContext)
    {
        // value values for the UserProperty (in most cases you
        // would use LoginName or Name)

        //Sid
        //ID
        //LoginName
        //Name
        //IsDomainGroup
        //Email
        //RawSid
        //Notes

        try
        {
            string err = string.Empty;

            if (__ActivationProperties == null)
            {
                err = "__ActivationProperties was null";
            }
            else
            {
                SPUser user = __ActivationProperties.OriginatorUser;

                if (user != null && UserProperty != null)
                {
                    PropertyInfo property = typeof (SPUser).GetProperty(UserProperty);
                    if (property != null)
                    {
                        object value = property.GetValue(user, null);
                        PropertyValueVariable = (value != null) ? value.ToString() : "";
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        err = string.Format("no property found with the name \"{0}\"", UserProperty);
                    }
                }
                else
                {
                    err = "__ActivationProperties.OriginatorUser was null";
                }
            }
            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(err))
                Common.LogExceptionToWorkflowHistory(new ArgumentOutOfRangeException(err), executionContext,
                                                     WorkflowInstanceId);
        }
        catch (Exception e)
        {
            Common.LogExceptionToWorkflowHistory(e, executionContext, WorkflowInstanceId);
        }

        return ActivityExecutionStatus.Closed;
    }
}

And then wire it up with the following .action xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<WorkflowInfo Language="en-us">
<Actions>
    <Action Name="Lookup initiator user property"
 ClassName="XXX.ActivityLibrary.LookupInitiatorInfo"
 Assembly="XXX.ActivityLibrary, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=XXX"
 AppliesTo="all"
 Category="WormaldWorkflow Custom Actions">
        <RuleDesigner Sentence="Lookup initating users property named %1 and store in %2">
            <FieldBind Field="UserProperty" DesignerType="TextArea" Id="1" Text="LoginName" />              
            <FieldBind Field="PropertyValueVariable" DesignerType="ParameterNames" Text="variable" Id="2"/>
        </RuleDesigner>
        <Parameters>
            <Parameter Name="__Context" Type="Microsoft.Sharepoint.WorkflowActions.WorkflowContext, Microsoft.SharePoint.WorkflowActions" Direction="In"/>
            <Parameter Name="__ActivationProperties" Type="Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWorkflowActivationProperties, Microsoft.SharePoint" Direction="In"/>
            <Parameter Name="UserProperty" Type="System.String, mscorlib" Direction="In" />
            <Parameter Name="PropertyValueVariable" Type="System.String, mscorlib" Direction="Out" />
        </Parameters>
    </Action>
</Actions>
</WorkflowInfo>

Answer 1

I don't think this is possible to do in SharePoint Designer out of the box. You could probably write a custom action to get the originator, but I don't believe it is exposed through the SPD workflow interface at all.

The best you could probably do is get the user who created or modified the item in the list, but this wouldn't handle cases where the workflow was manually run.

Answer 2

For those that google into this article and are now using SharePoint 2010, the workflow initiator variable is now supported OOTB in SharePoint Designer.

The datasource would be "Workflow Context" and the field is, of course, "Initiator" and you can choose to return it as the "Display Name", "Email", "Login Name" or the "User ID Number"

Answer 3

I can think about a simple but not very sophisticated solution for this one by using just SPD. Just in workflow steps create a test item in a secondary list (probably a task list which stores the workflowId and itemId properties for refrence back) and then do a lookup in your workflow on that list to see who is the creator of that item, that value would be the current workflow initiator.

Answer 4

The custom activity solution only work if you are working with moss, if you only have wss 3.0 you can put one step more in your workflow and set a custom comment field with any information, this make the last modified person to change and become the same as the workflow initiator, then you can use the ModifiedBy field to make any decision that you need.