Generating an instance migration policy file to manage orphaned tokens

Use a policy file to proactively compare snapshots before instance migration to identify the potential locations of orphaned tokens and specify whether each orphaned token should be deleted or moved.

About this task

When performing instance migration from a source to a target snapshot, orphaned tokens can occur if a process activity exists in the source but not in the target. If an existing instance has a token associated with the removed activity when it is migrated, the token is considered orphaned. You can define an instance migration policy file that allows you to manage these orphaned tokens. You can choose to delete the token or move it to a different process activity (step) that exists in the target snapshot. When this policy file is used during an instance migration, instance migration searches each instance for tokens that match the defined step. If it finds an orphaned token, it performs the associated move or delete operation.
Note: You can't define token operations for activities that are not orphaned.

You can enable instance migration to suspend the process after the token operations are performed so you can make further changes and resume the instance before users can access them. A policy file is specific to each unique source and target snapshot pair. It contains a section for each process that contains orphaned activities. Each process section contains a step entry for each orphaned activity in the process. If there are no orphaned activities for a source and target snapshot pair, a policy file is still generated but won't contain actions to perform.

Procedure

Use one of the following methods to generate the policy file for orphaned tokens:

What to do next

Follow the steps in Migrating process instances and snapshot data.