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I'm curious to know how others handle the testing and Change Control process for workflows.

 

I make modifications in the Test tenant and test the workflow there - can be arduous with some of the logic and boundary conditions.  Once done I export from Test and import to Production through the Workflow editor page.  However, within Production when I edit an existing workflow (lets call it Flow1), select import, it doesn't overwrite the existing definition of Flow1, but closes that object and opens the imported workflow as a new object.  I can't then save it as Flow1 "a workflow with that name already exists", so have to go with Flow2.  That also changes the name of the status fields in List view and starts to get messy.

 

The alternative is editing the existing Flow1 workflow and manually repeating the changes previously done in Test - not the safest of methods.

 

How do you handle this?

 

Thanks,

Gerard

I'm also wondering this... I deleted my list and workflow etc, re-deployed this list and I can't create it with the same name -_-

Did you ever figure this out?

Chris Ben​

The workflow gallery which was released a couple of months ago makes this much easier.  You can now rename/overwrite and delete workflows.

Bex - I haven't tried re-creating a list and deploying a workflow of the same name but if you want a sure-fire way of doing this, then delete the workflow first from the gallery, delete the list and then re-create everything.

Cheers,

Chris

Hi,

I ran into similar issues with not being able to overwrite a workflow. You can also completely delete old workflows by going to the site using SharePoint Designer 2013, and this will also work if you deleted the original list.

Open the site in SharePoint Designer, then click on 'Workflows' in the left hand pane:

DeleteWorkflow1.PNG

Find the workflow under the 'List Workflow' section (my example shown) then just click 'Delete' on the ribbon at the top. This should completely remove it (including any history and breaking running instances of it - they'll show up as 'deleted association'), then you can use the name again. NB don't delete any of Nintex's stuff in the other section, that could cause some issues I assume

Hello, here the Blogpost ​, with some further informations.

But if there are Running instances of this workflow, you shouldn't delete the existing WF, until all instances are ended as expected.

Then I would "invent" some numbering of the workflow.

You can check if any workflow is still running under > List Settings -> Workflows-> Dropdown -> Workflowsettings

By clicking on Remove, Block or Restore a Workflow, you will see a screen like below

Here you can set your previous workflow to No New Instances, that means no new Instances of this workflow are creating.

After the Instances are set to 0, you can safely remove the workflow

Be aware to save your history before you delete the workflow.

Hope it helps, if not or in any case of further questions (related to the text above), do not hesitate to ask

BR

oli

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