We currently have an application that we no longer want people to create new ent

Taking an assumption that you have already considered all the above mentioned possible ways of starting a process and there is only one way to start a process ie actions, then I would say to just delete the actions from the application or unpublish the application.

Unpublishing an application will not restrict user to see/ use records/ reports or any other activities of the running processes.

On the other hand if users are removed from the group, there are chances of some security errors during the process.

Now if you don't want your users to be in confused state, that where is the action gone, then change the process for the action and have a dummy process explaining that they have actually clicked on a deprecated version and navigating them to the correct new action. This can be during the transition process for a while. Once the users are aware about it, it would be safe to remove the actions.

Taking an assumption that you have already considered all the above mentioned possible ways of starting a process and there is only one way to start a process ie actions, then I would say to just delete the actions from the application or unpublish the application.

Unpublishing an application will not restrict user to see/ use records/ reports or any other activities of the running processes.

On the other hand if users are removed from the group, there are chances of some security errors during the process.

Now if you don't want your users to be in confused state, that where is the action gone, then change the process for the action and have a dummy process explaining that they have actually clicked on a deprecated version and navigating them to the correct new action. This can be during the transition process for a while. Once the users are aware about it, it would be safe to remove the actions.