Deleting process instances

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This topic only applies to BAW, and is located in the BAW repository. Last updated on 2025-01-20 10:38
You can use the Process Admin Console, a REST API call, or a wsadmin command to delete process instances that match specified criteria. You can only perform this operation if your user ID is a member of the administrator group.
Warning: When you delete a process instance, all local attachments of that instance are also deleted.

If you want to specify particular process instance states, the states running, finished, and stopped correspond to the states active, completed, and failed in wsadmin and Process Inspector.

Tip: Before you delete any processes instances, you can get a count of how many instances match the criteria for deletion. Also, if a delete operation takes a long time, you can get a count to check the number of instances that are left to delete.
Note: As of IBM® Business Automation Workflow 23.0 and above, the Health Management menu option has a new path that links to the REST API Swagger page.

Using the Process Admin Console and REST API call

  1. Login to the Process Admin Console at https://<BAW_hostname:port>/ProcessAdmin.
  2. Select the menu icon and select Process Admin > Health Management.

    IBM Business Automation Workflow Operations REST Interface Swagger UI opens in a new browser tab.

  3. Load the IBM Business Automation Workflow Operations REST Interface Swagger UI: 
    https://host:port/bpm/explorer/?url=https://host:port/ops/docs?tags=Health%20Management#/Health%20Management
  4. Expand the System section, then expand the POST/system/login section.
  5. Click Try it out > Execute.

    If the login is not successful, HTTP error code is shown in the Server response section. Fix the error and repeat the login.

    If the login is successful, the HTTP response code is 201 and the csrf_token element is found at the Response body section.
    { "csrf_token": "eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJleHAiOjE....o0PoTvKdQxokI5XaZRMw", "expiration": 7200 }
  6. Copy the csrf_token and locate/expand DELETE /std/bpm/processes API call in the Health Management section.
  7. Click Try it out.
  8. Copy the csrf_token to the BPMCSRFToken parameter.
  9. Specify values for the parameters. Required parameters are marked with a *.
    Important: To delete process instances that are in states other than finished and terminated, you must specify the option force=true.
  10. Click Execute.

Using a wsadmin command

To delete process instances from the IBM Business Automation Workflow database, see BPMProcessInstancesPurge command.