Question

Workflow history vanishing

  • 22 June 2023
  • 4 replies
  • 112 views

Badge +2

Have a weird issue going on here where the history for workflows are vanishing. Hoping someone has an idea as to what is going on here or how to troubleshoot this one.

Workflow Details:
We have a list where we have a Nintex workflow running.  It’s a simple flow with an approval that updates a choice column in the list with  “Approved”, or “Rejected”.   This workflow only runs when a specific field is modified.


Issue:
The workflow history for the workflows are intermittently vanishing.  For example, we will have several flows run on a given day, up to 8 on average. All completed.  However, only 2 or 3 of them will show workflow history when completed.

  • The “In Progress” ones don’t seem to be vanishing.
  • No workflows with errors occurring recently.  Or if there was, it doesn’t show in the history.
  • When attempting to view “Workflow History” it appears as if the workflow never ran at all as there is no completed or running workflows on the list items.
  • Able to confirm workflow running by item version history.
  • Able to confirm workflow trigger conditions by item version history.
  • No recent modifications to the workflow.

 

 

Environment Details:

SharePoint 2016 - On Prem
Nintex Workflow 2016 - Enterprise


4 replies

Userlevel 5
Badge +13

Hi @emlandis 

 

sounds like you might be hitting limits on the Sharepoint workflow history and may need to perform maintenance on the dbs, a good way to check if this is required is to check the record counts.

 

see this kb for more details. 
 

https://help.nintex.com/en-us/nintex2016/current/sp2016/NWSetup/DBnav.htm
 

Jake

Userlevel 6
Badge +22

Hi @emlandis 

When you select view “Workflow History” this shows Nintex’s workflow history.
If you click on the workflow status of completed, this shows SharePoints workflow history.

Do you see SharePoints workflow history?

What is the scope of the issue?  Is it one list, one site, one site collection? etc.

Badge +2

@Jake,

Thanks for the article.  Will check on this today.

@SimonMuntz , 

I have only verified on one list so far.  Scope may be larger, but not yet confirmed. 

Also, it’s not showing the status of “completed” in the list view. Going to the item menu and opening “workflows”  shows no workflow active or history data.  Same item, going to the “workflow history” option does show Nintex’s workflow history for the item.

With this new info, it seems like the issue lies in the underlining SharePoint workflow side rather than Nintex’s workflow portion.

Userlevel 6
Badge +22

@emlandis 

If Nintex workflow history exists but SharePoint history does not exist it is most likely that the SharePoint 60 day cleanup job is running in the environment.

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