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tanvirs0003
tanvirs0003
Inspiring
December 7, 2021
Solved

Delete 50000 Instances of a Process Model

  • December 7, 2021
  • 8 replies
  • 0 views

One of our process model is being used inside a WEB API as startProcess, Some external System has hit the Web API 50k times & that particular process model & its sub processes has started 53k+ times. Due to this the Appian Server & the other process are not running . Monitoring tab is also not accessible. What is the easiest way to delete all this 50K instances so that the server can work properly

Best answer by vincenzor8745

if you have access to designer you can try to export the problematic processes with a patch.
After do this, delete the process models this have the side effect to eliminate currently instances. Last step is reimport deleted process with the previous created patch. 

8 replies

vincenzor8745
vincenzor8745Answer
December 7, 2021

if you have access to designer you can try to export the problematic processes with a patch.
After do this, delete the process models this have the side effect to eliminate currently instances. Last step is reimport deleted process with the previous created patch. 

    tanvirs0003
    tanvirs0003Author
    Inspiring
    December 7, 2021

    Monitoring tab is not opening, so how can I take the patch. I have created one utility process model which is cancelling the ongoing process models but due to server slowness its working very slow pace as well. Its taking more than 2 minutes to execute a node. Till now only 5k processes has been cancelled in one hour

    vincenzor8745
    vincenzor8745
    December 7, 2021

    you have to make the patch from object tab, not monitoring.
    Create and export new package with problematic process models and follow the instructions.

    stewart.burchell
    stewart.burchell
    December 7, 2021

    In addition you should also consider how to design to prevent this scenario happening again. This should be part of the "contract" that you have with the calling system.

    vincenzor8745
    vincenzor8745
    December 7, 2021

    Right, but I do not recommend to start process directly from a webapi, because often we encounter this problems.
    I like the model "fetch and control" before start a process.

    tanvirs0003
    tanvirs0003Author
    Inspiring
    December 9, 2021

     Hi Vincenzo, Thank you. It worked for Instance Deletion.
    Could you please explain me about Fetch & Control Model

    [mention:ed726347884b464d9eb008d8f3a9c237:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05]

    I like the model "fetch and control" before start a process.
    peter.lewis
    peter.lewis
    Employee
    December 8, 2021

    Can you clarify what you mean that "Monitoring tab is also not accessible" - do you not have security access? Is it timing out? Is it showing an error? If it's just timing out, you could try to create a process report that displays all of your processes: https://docs.appian.com/suite/help/latest/Configuring_Process_Reports.html

    From there, you should be able to increase the page size to view / select all of the running instances and delete them.

    Another question - did the processes complete successfully or did they error? If they completed, presumably they will eventually be archived based on your archival policy. You may also want to set your archive policy to be much shorter to prevent this in the future.

    tanvirs0003
    tanvirs0003Author
    Inspiring
    December 9, 2021

    HI Peter, Monitoring tab was timing out & throwing error. All the Processes were active in a User input task node. 
    Deletion from Process Report wasnt working as well, It was timing out as well. Due to huge server load maybe.

    I followed the method mentioned by Vincenzo it worked. But anyway server is having issues since the mishap & team is working with Appian Support to make the server available

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