I'm very excited to see the new Scheduling features for O365 Workflows. As first read from Tee Up Your Work - Scheduled Workflows Are Available for Office 365! we learned the basics of scheduling site workflows. So I ran a few site workflows myself and could not find the history that they executed. My first test workflow would send me an email, since I received the email I knew it was working. But there was no evidence. Typically, I would go to Site Contents from the suite menu gear, then click on Site Workflows.
I then see my normal screen of available site workflows to run, and which are still running or completed. Notice in this view I don't see anything in the completed section, yet I had the Email Site Workflow scheduled to run and it executed.
What I found was, by clicking on Show All Workflows, I then see the completed scheduled workflows.
Clicking on the workflow name will then display the workflow history associated.
The reason this was required is that the workflow executed under elevated App permissions. Notice the userID is app@sharepoint. So by selecting to show all site workflows I then could see workflows completed by the system.
A couple of key notes to follow:
- Keep in mind you can disable these schedules and schedule data will be retained for 90 days after the final execution so you can quickly reference your prior work. This means specifically the schedule rules for the workflow from the workflow gallery. This is not related to History data.
- History for each workflow instance is saved to the history list specified in the workflow settings, typically the default site workflow history list. In SharePoint Online, the Workflow Auto Cleanup job permanently deletes workflow instances and related task entries that still exist 60 days after a workflow is completed or canceled. You can regularly export the workflow history list if you need to save the workflow history for longer than 60 days, or contact your Farm Administrator to reconfigure job settings.
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To view the default site workflow history list
Append the following to your site URL:
/Lists/Workflow%20History
For example, if your site URL is https://example.sharepoint.com/sites/hr, then the appended URL appears as follows.
https://example.sharepoint.com/sites/hr/Lists/Workflow%20History -
To enable scheduled workflows, the following SharePoint site feature must be activated by your site administrator:
Workflows can use app permissions
This feature remains inactive until it is activated.
