Forum Discussion
How to Disable Automatic Workflow Cleanup
We set up a workflow on one of our SharePoint pages to both approve and keep track of vacation time for our team.
We have been confused for a while now how (and why) items mysteriously get deleted. I found all kinds of references online that items in SharePoint’s workflows are deleted after 60 days. Unfortunately, my SharePoint admin said that wasn't applicable to SharePoint Online (the article was for SharePoint v2010) and he wasn't aware of any settings to disable workflow items being deleted. However, it is odd that there are thousands of references to workflows in older SharePoints removing items after 60 days and this is EXACTLY what is happening for me. I have over 50 documented occurrences and they all happened EXACTLY 60 days after they were created.
I inserted a pic below.
I have been looking everywhere, but can't seem to find a setting to stop this.
I have been been manually re sending items thur the workflow to ensure everyone's vacation appears, but this is not a good long-term solution.
Has anyone ever come accross this? I inserted a pic below.
Thanks! - Dan
- Unfortunately for you, Juan's answer is correct. What you can, though, is copy the records in this list to another one created by you. These items will not be deleted. I had a client once who had to keep track of those and that was the solution. You can create a workflow in Sharepoint Designer or Microsoft Flow to copy items for you. Depending on the values you want, it might not be hard to accomplish. Lemme know if you need help.
6 Replies
- Unfortunately for you, Juan's answer is correct. What you can, though, is copy the records in this list to another one created by you. These items will not be deleted. I had a client once who had to keep track of those and that was the solution. You can create a workflow in Sharepoint Designer or Microsoft Flow to copy items for you. Depending on the values you want, it might not be hard to accomplish. Lemme know if you need help.
Deleted- any recommendation on how to get the workflow on the approval task to actually run? Or will this not work with 2010 Approval Task items? I created a new workflow to run when a new record is created in our particular approval task item list and have set it to "run automatically" when new approval task items are created in that list. When trying to test it though, the "copy" workflow doesn't seem to actually be getting started. While I do see the copy workflow as being associated to the list, there doesn't seem to be a way for me to even manually start it on an approval item even though I have that option check for the copy workflow.
Hey DamianH ,
So the problem is that your workflow is not triggering? Mine would trigger just fine in the list. If you can't even start the workflow it may be a permission problem. Have you assured that you have permission to start them?
Thank you Carlis.
I ended up removing the customized view so all items appear now regardless of the approval status and will just have our admin team manual delete the items that are rejected.
This way it will not matter with workflow status is.
I appreciate your response, which helped me focus in another direction.
- Unfortunately you cannot change this setting in SPO, it's just by design
Thank you Juan.
I ended up removing the customized view so all items appear now regardless of the approval status and will just have our admin team manual delete the items that are rejected.
This way it will not matter with workflow status is.
I appreciate your response, which helped me focus in another direction.
