Purge workflow data

[lehuspohus]

Hello! I want to ask about "Purge workflow data" option in Central Administration - Nintex Workflow section.

Our farm have a lot of workflows on different sites and lists, workflows which getting stuck in error state.

Using "purge workflow data" i can find all of them, filtering by "Errored" state and then terminate manually.

But if i just click "Purge", does the same things happens or not? Does clicking "Purge" technically equal to terminate+remove history?

Should i use "Purge" instead of "Terminate this workflow" manually if i don't want to keep any history of that workflows?

Or, for example, some jobs relying under GUI still getting executed when workflow isn't terminated?

[eiben · Accepted solution]

Hi,

"purge" does not terminate any running instances. It will just delete the entries in the nintex-database regarding this workflow-instance.

Also: if you don't terminate errored workflows, the (sharepoint) workflow-engine will periodically check those workflows, and you'll not be able to start a new workflow-instance, because (at least list-workflows) can only have one active instance.

So you should periodically check for errored workflows and terminate them. You might also want to have a look why those workflows errored in the first place an maybe revise your workflow-design.

Instead of using the CA to purge workflow data, you could also use powershell & scheduled tasks: How to purge items from a large history list safely via PowerShell

[#3]

Hi, Alex Bulgakov​! Let us know if this helped and mark Henning's answer correct. If you're still seeking a solution, your feedback is welcome!

Thanks!

Frank

[lehuspohus]

Hi! As you said, "purge" delete the entries in the Nintex DB, but if entries are deleted, then what will be checked by engine?

It is a essence of the question )

If i just purge data in database, does workflows are still running in something else (as jobs in app pool or any other running code in server memory)?

[eiben]

Well, the workflow runs within the SharePoint workflow engine. The nintex database is noz needed to actually run the workflow, but rather contains additional information about the workflow (among other things).

So if you purge the database  this information is being deleted. This does not affect the workflow itself.

[lehuspohus]

Thank you for explanation!