Can You Cancel a Pending Workflow Task?

Hi @kunalpatel, 

Thanks for the reply. The solution you propose is essentially the same thing I already have but it is executed within the form in my solution. You propose a separate workflow that runs to cancel the other(s). My primary workflow still has work to do when a cancellation takes place and the flexi task is aborted. Case and point, lets say I have a leave request that has pulled available time off from a time bank to reserve it for the current request. Upon cancellation, I will want the workflow to abort the flexi task and return any reserved time off back to the requestor's bank of available time off.
Currently, to accomplish this, I must cancel the running primary workflow with a cancellation workflow and then restart the primary workflow to complete the necessary time bank work. I accomplish this with a state machine, switch, and state flags so that when the cancellation takes place, the workflow knows to run through the cancelled state. This works reliably but I am looking for a more elegant way to accomplish this with less overhead. Especially one that does not require an additional workflow and can be handled by the use from within the form.

Any thoughts?

Thanks and Regards,

Patrick

Hi @kunalpatel,

I think that you response sparked some thoughts on this but I tried to build a test model and discovered that the Flexi task action will not allow the use of the "Action ID" variable; only a Number or List item ID data type when storing the task ID. Also, the "Complete workflow task" action  which seems like the logical choice for the other parralell branch in my case, will only accept "Action ID" variable data type. Will this process NOT work with a Flexi task? Can you think of another work around?

Thanks so much for the assistance.

Patrick

Hi @kunalpatel,

I will try and model that as a proof of concept but my workflows call for the features that a flexi task has so using a Request Approval action does not work for my purposes.

Regards,

Patrick 

@kunalpatel ... Flexible / greater than 2 outcomes.

I don't understand what you want to achieve. Is the "Cancel" one of the options to complete a task?

Or is it just the button that user clicks when they don't want to perform any action?

Hi @TomaszPoszytek,

Thanks for responding. The objective is to have a process that many can cancel even when only a few have an active task. There are several approval tiers in the process and for an expensive item where special, lengthy, approval routing needs to take place, the process could take several weeks or even months to close.

While one of these flexi tasks are running, suppose the requestor decides he wants to cancel the request... He should be able to open the form, select a cancellation panel, sign and confirm. When this happens, I want to know if there is some creative way, without having addidional separate workflows running, to escape/abort any active flexitask. 

I was thinking a parralel branch might do it as @kunalpatel has suggested earlier but the flexi task does not have an "Action ID" variable like some of the other tasks. I also do not want to abandon the use of a flexitask if possible.

Does that clarify? If not let me know what is unclear and I will try and elaborate more.

Thanks and regards,

Patrick

Hi,

so what you can do is to use for example that approach with parallel branch, but in the second branch to flexi task use query task list action. I am doing this by adding related item ID to the title, so then I can query tasks list for tasks having ID in title. It's not very pretty but it works.

The other solution would be, to use web service action to call SharePoint API, to get all tasks, along with the field "RelatedItems". That field is an array, so first you would need to go through all the items to extract related item ID, and this way to get a list of really related items :P

Ex.:

<d:RelatedItems>[{"ItemId":206,"WebId":"4852a749-124d-43db-9537-7211335849ff","ListId":"908133d7-6bf2-4361-b2e5-ae9553a8e07d"}]</d:RelatedItems>

 Achieve it using this URL:
{YOUR SITE URL}/_api/lists/getByTitle('Workflow%20Tasks')/items()?$select=Id,RelatedItems

Regards,

Tomasz

Looks promising. How would you use it?

Hi@TomaszPoszytek, I am going to try to model the parallel branch solution first. Then try the solution @cassymfreeman offered.

Instead of making the title modification, would it so the same thing to use the flexi task's "Store task IDs" feature and run the query list action in the parallel branch by filtering on the list item id from the flexi task variable? If so, what do I need to do to the task list item to make the flexi task abort?

Thanks and Regards,

Patrick

Ok... I tried to model this part where I captured the task ID in the "Store Task ID" variable. It did not work as the variable did not populate until I responded to the task that the flexi task action was exited.

Hi @TomaszPoszytek, I have been workign on this and I was able to get a return with the URL formation you gave me. My web request returned the following XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices" xmlns:georss="http://www.georss.org/georss" xmlns:gml="http://www.opengis.net/gml" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices/metadata" xml:base="https://vector.leidos.com/ASP/dev/nintex/_api/">
   <id>00103ac2-af71-4289-8775-bdd8ffe59d05</id>
   <title />
   <updated>2020-01-23T21:36:46Z</updated>
   <entry m:etag="&quot;3&quot;">
      <id>13352afc-ebb0-4bca-9709-0e9d72ffd062</id>
      <category term="SP.Data.Workflow_x0020_TasksListItem" scheme="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices/scheme" />
      <link rel="edit" href="Web/Lists(guid'c00c8d5a-a195-4b25-81d0-e88152b550bc')/Items(3)" />
      <title />
      <updated>2020-01-23T21:36:46Z</updated>
      <author>
         <name />
      </author>
      <content type="application/xml">
         <m:properties>
            <d:Id m:type="Edm.Int32">3</d:Id>
            <d:RelatedItems m:null="true" />
            <d:ID m:type="Edm.Int32">3</d:ID>
         </m:properties>
      </content>
   </entry>
   <entry m:etag="&quot;1&quot;">
      <id>b2b1bc9e-2ef1-4c7f-a8e6-7dc58fcf8988</id>
      <category term="SP.Data.Workflow_x0020_TasksListItem" scheme="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices/scheme" />
      <link rel="edit" href="Web/Lists(guid'c00c8d5a-a195-4b25-81d0-e88152b550bc')/Items(4)" />
      <title />
      <updated>2020-01-23T21:36:46Z</updated>
      <author>
         <name />
      </author>
      <content type="application/xml">
         <m:properties>
            <d:Id m:type="Edm.Int32">4</d:Id>
            <d:RelatedItems m:null="true" />
            <d:ID m:type="Edm.Int32">4</d:ID>
         </m:properties>
      </content>
   </entry>
</feed>

How do I use <m:properties><d:Id m:type="Edm.Int32">4</d:Id><d:RelatedItems m:null="true" /> <d:ID m:type="Edm.Int32">4</d:ID></m:properties>? In the case of this specific Item, the task I want to get to is "4" but I am still unclear on how to identify it from the other tasks in the list.

It is important to note that when I use this in production, the workflows will have several flexi tasks in them and will run on state machines so a given task may need to run more than once if the user is asked to edit and resubmit his/her request.

Thoughts?

Thanks,

Patrick

Thanks @TomaszPoszytek. Naming might be tricky unless I use some invrementing variable as the tasks can be reused. I put a 5 minute pasue before the web request just to make sure it did not out-run the felxi task as well. I will keep thinking about this but start modeling the @cassymfreeman  suggestion. Could you take a look at my questions to Cassy and see if you have any thoughts? She has not been able to respond yet.

Thanks to you both!!

Patrick