Publish LiveSite Content Workflow hangs

Denise Bowker

We had an issue where non-administrators workflows would hang while trying to publish .page files in TS 7.2.1.

Symptom: the workflow would not move past "1 of 3 deployments"
Resolution: the layout file (default/main/[branch]/WORKAREA/development/iw/config/fixed-layout/[fn.xml] must be writable by the person doing the submit.

Personally I don't want my business partners to have write access to the page layout file, but apparently it's necessary for the workflow to work.

This issue took over 2 months to resolve, I'm hoping this post can help someone avoid that.
(Yes I'm cross posting this)