Terminating a zombie tasks

Hi @TravisM,

if you are using Automation Cloud, you should be able to navigate to the tasks area in the automation tab and filter the list by the the workflow you are using. 
 

here you should be able to select multiple tasks and terminate them, if the termination is not working can you please show some screenshots?

Jake

As I said in my request, I cannot delete the tasks from the console.  There is a 5 day window on the console, and these have exceeded that time limit.

I’ve been exploring the get tasks actions, but when I terminate a task, it says terminated, but when I examine the tasks list, they are still there.

Hi @TravisM, should there be that many tasks active? do you think perhaps there is some sort of loop in play here, you might have to terminate the instances themselves and figure why these loops are happening before you correct the issue. 

terminating the workflow instances will close the tasks and you can do this en-masse 

Let me explain.  I have a scheduled start workflow that fires off on the first of each  month.  It reads a list of work, then calls a component workflow, passing in all the required parameters.  The component workflow then assigns a form task as needed.  This past run had 52 list items, with varying number of assignees.  For whatever reason, a required parameter on these 6 is not rendering on the form.  When I examine the logs, the parameters were passed, but the task is not recognizing them for some reason.  I have opened a ticket with Nintex, but they are still investigating.  In the mean time, I need to kill these 6 zombies.  The missing parameter is preventing a submission.  I resubmitted these 6 again and the resubmitted tasks processed successfully on the 2nd submission. And the original workflow instance has completed so I cannot call up the instance.

so, back to my original question.  Has anyone written any tools or utilities that can query tasks and terminate them?

Hi @TravisM,

Yes tasks can be terminated programatically.

You can do this 2 ways both require an App token to be generated in the settings. 

https://help.nintex.com/en-US/nwc/Content/Settings/APItokens.htm

One way to do this would be by building a workflow and using the NAC extensions kit to find and close the tasks: 

https://gallery.nintex.com/t/nintex-workflow-cloud-api

I would suggest find the instances and terminating them as there is no means of ‘terminating’ tasks only completing them with an outcome. 

Another method would be the same but slightly more manually via Postman or the Nintex API reference page, it has a working API tool.

Depending on how many you have however there might be some code needed but these are the 2 calls you need.

https://developer.nintex.com/docs/nc-api-docs/046832983606a-list-a-workflow-s-instances

https://developer.nintex.com/docs/nc-api-docs/f088a75546a21-stop-an-instance

Personally I would create a workflow to do this as it will be easiest to manage and use again if required.

I will leave the issues with the instances to the support team to investigate but if you need any other assistance please let me know.

Kind regards

Jake 

Hi @TravisM 
Have you resolved this question?