SharePoint User Group UK

Can anyone confirm how long SharePoint 2007 will keep tasks within a site's workflow tasks list? I've heard 60 days is the number but can anyone confirm this?

Tasks do not usually 'expire' - even when you pass their due date, although they may not appear if you have a view that excludes them.

If you are running MOSS rather than WSS, you can configure the Information Management Policy (List Settings, Permissions and Management) to set criteria here for removal of tasks. If you did not setup the task list, it would be worth checking here if you are concerned.

You can add workflow via SharePoint Designer to notify you of tasks that are about to pass their due date, likewise if you could create a workflow here for WSS to delete them by certain criteria.

Hope that helps

 

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Rebecca Handley

Thanks for your response Rebecca. Sorry, I should probably have mentioned that I'm using a MOSS 2007 publishing site with workflow and the workflow task lists in question contain of all of the parallel approval tasks that have been created per site. Does the same still apply?

Strangely, I haven't tweaked the views at all and I don't see any tasks older than about 60 days - should I worry? I'm a bit concerned about the size that these lists will grow to in the future and how this might affect performance.

Thanks in advance.

Do you have any tasks older than 60 days? Create a view showing all content, and include creation date (select 'created' box) with no filters (via View on the top right - you will see there are numerous default views filtering your data).

I am not aware that the Publishing workflow list deletes items and would bet this doesn't have different management rules to other lists in SharePoint lists unless you configure them, but I could be wrong (reassuring!).

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Rebecca Handley

Hi Rebecca,

No it doesn't appear that I do have any tasks older than 60 days (and I did create a new 'All tasks' view with the 'created' column ticked to check). I also don't have any information management policy settings set up within these task lists.

I can only assume that these are deleted automatically by SharePoint - what do you think?

I've since managed to find the definitive answer to this and so thought I'd share it. It sounds like, by default, there's a job within central admin that'll clean up workflow tasks automatically unless disabled. Read more here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc298800.aspx

I think you are mixing things here. The article describes the cleanup of the workflow history information not the workflow tasks. I have not found a job to cleanup workflow tasks from the task list.