Instances

To resume an instance that was previously stopped, click on the stopped instance from the view and click the Start button. The status of the instance will change from Stopped to Active and the workflow instance will continue from the workflow step where it was previously stopped. You can only Start a process that is in the “Stopped” state

The Start/Stop functions are normally used to suspend execution for processes temporarily, for example to hold off execution until a problem has been resolved. Note that if any events like Escalations occur while the process is stopped, K2 will not execute those actions while the process is stooped, but will execute them immediately when the process is started if the escalation time was reached while the workflow was stopped. Stopped instances will not appear in users’ worklists.

To stop a running instance, click on the instance from the view and click the Stop button. Click OK on the confirmation message. The status of the instance will change from Active to Stopped.

You can only Stop process instances that are in the “Active” or “Running” state. “Active” means that the process is “alive” but waiting for something to happen. Usually this means that there is a client event that must be completed before the process can continue. “Running” means that K2 is busy executing code against the process. Processes should never be in “running” status for more than a few seconds (a few minutes is exceptional cases). If a process is constantly in the “running” status, it usually means that the workflow is in an endless loop and is negatively affecting the performance of the K2 server.

To delete an instance, click on the instance or select a group of instances from the view, and then click the Delete button. On the Delete Instances page, check the Delete Reporting Data (Logs) checkbox to delete the logging information of the process instances. Then click OK.

The instance is removed from the view and the task from the worklist, and no further steps can be completed on this workflow instance. If the Delete Reporting Data (Logs) checkbox is selected, data about the instances are removed from the database and the instances no longer appear in reports. This can be useful when you need to delete test instances. See How to: clean your K2 environment by deleting application artifacts for more information about deleting application artifacts.

To go to a specific step in an active workflow, select the instance from the view and click the GoTo Activity button. Select the Activity Name you want to go to and click OK. Click OK on the confirmation message and OK again on the information message. The workflow instance will now continue with the activity that has been selected.

This function is normally use to “skip” steps in the workflow or force the process to go back to a previous step. You can only redirect the process back to an activity in the same version of the process: if a newer version of the workflow has additional activities, they will not appear in this list. Note that K2 will execute all rules for the activity (e.g. destination rules, escalations etc.) again if the activity is restarted.

Normally used to start "test" instances of a workflow manually, to start workflows that do not have an associated interface for starting the workflow, or to start a process that performs some type of “polling” action.

You can provide a Folio for the new instance, specify whether the instance should start Synchronously or Asynchronously, and provide values for the process-level data fields and XML datafields defined in the workflow.