How Workflow Tasks Are Archived and Purged
Workflow tasks with a final status of Completed, Errored, Expired, or Withdrawn can be archived and purged. In progress tasks with statuses like Assigned, Information Requested, or Suspended aren't eligible.
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Archiving keeps a copy of the task data for audit, data retention or analysis, and other purposes. Archived data includes task details, approval history, comments, and attachments. How you view or use the archived data depends on the products you're using. For example, the data might be displayed in a table on a page, or available through a business intelligence subject area that you can select to create an analysis.
These are the database tables that store the archived data:
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FND_BPM_TASK_B
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FND_BPM_TASK_TL
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FND_BPM_TASK_HISTORY_B
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FND_BPM_TASK_HISTORY_TL
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FND_BPM_TASK_ASSIGNEE
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FND_BPM_TASK_COMMENT
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FND_BPM_TASK_ATTACHMENT
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Purging removes the completed tasks from users' worklists and permanently deletes the original data.
Archive
Tasks are automatically archived once a day without you having to set anything up. You can't change or stop this automatic archive, which includes all eligible tasks that aren't archived yet. These scheduled processes run in this order to get the daily archive done:
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Extract Workflow Tasks for Archive
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Process Translations for Workflow Tasks Archive
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Upload Workflow Task Attachments for Archive
All three scheduled processes must complete for tasks to get archived. But, as soon as Extract Workflow Tasks for Archive is done, the tasks are available for purge. It usually takes around two hours for each automatic process to finish.
Though unlikely, if you ever need to archive more frequently, you can use the Scheduled Processes work area to manually run these processes. But it's best not to unless it's really necessary. In which case, keep these in mind:
- Run the processes in the same order that they're run for the automatic archive.
- Don't run these processes when any of the three processes are still running, including the automatic runs.
- Run the processes during off hours, but not at midnight when the purge is running.
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Optionally set parameters for the Extract Workflow Tasks for Archive process. Let's say you select 50000 for the Number of Tasks in Batch parameter and 120 for the Maximum Runtime in Minutes parameter. That means the process will archive in batches of 50000 workflow tasks. If it's still running after two hours, the process finishes archiving the current batch and then stops. You can check the log file of the process to see how many tasks are included in the archive.
If the automatic archive isn't working, don't manually run the processes to compensate. Instead, contact your help desk to ensure that the automatic archive works again.
Purge
Archived tasks that were last updated over 30 days ago are purged without you doing any setup. The purge runs daily at midnight. You can't change or stop this automatic purge.
After a task is purged, users can no longer find it in BPM Worklist or the Worklist: Notifications and Approvals work area. The task's approval history won't be available either. But, the tasks are still in the archive tables and available in analytics or anything else that reflects the archived data.