Deleting finished instances of active workflows

Workflows that are active for a long time can have many workflow instances that are finished and for which the execution information is not relevant anymore.

On the ION management page for active workflows you can delete finished instances and their related data without deactivating and archiving the workflow definition first.

Finished workflow instances are instances with this status:

  • Completed
  • Canceled
  • Failed

When deleting a workflow instance, this information is removed:

  • The workflow instance itself.
  • The tasks that are generated by this workflow instance.
  • The notifications that are generated by this workflow instance.
  • The "start workflow" item if this instance was started manually by the Start Workflows widget user.

Other management pages such as Active Activation Policies, Active Workflow Schedules, OneView and so on can hold a reference to the ID of a workflow instance which was deleted. These references or counts are not removed when the workflow instances are deleted. If the user navigates to the Workflow Instances page from such a context, then the page shows this message “No data to display”.

Deleting data is irreversible. Each delete action is queued for execution and is logged. See Monitors & Workflows > Archive > Delete Logs.