Workflow history deleted in 60 days

By default, WSS3.0 automatically deletes workflow history after 60 days. The purge doesn't technically delete the history - but it deletes the association that ties the document to the workflow history. It also deletes any tasks that were created by the workflow.

This is for performance considerations, courtesy of the Workflow Auto Cleanup timer job in the config section.

Three options to consider:

• Disable the Workflow Auto Cleanup timer job completely. (Please note that this might have serious performance implications, and should be planned carefully)


• Include a specific xml tag in your workflow feature.xml file that controls the number of days retained for the workflow history (max days = 9999)
  
• Run a job nightly to force all the workflow history retention settings to a certain number of days (max days = 9999)

To set the time schedule for when the scan will occur to delete workflow data for the Web application, http://test, use the following syntax:

stsadm -o setproperty -pn job-workflow-autoclean -pv "daily at 15:00:00" -url http://test

To view the current setting of the job-workflow-autoclean property, use the following syntax:

stsadm -o getproperty -pn job-workflow-autoclean -url http://test

• You can modify this setting using the SharePoint object model - as Robert's postings suggest take a look at the SPWorkflowAssociation.AutoCleanupdays property. Take a look at the next code sample
  using (SPSite sitecollection = new SPSite("http://moss:99"))
  {using(SPWeb site = sitecollection.OpenWeb("/demo")){ SPWorkflowAssociation _assoc = null; SPList list = site.Lists["Shared documents"]; foreach (SPWorkflowAssociation assoc in list.WorkflowAssociations) { if (assoc.Name == "WFDemo") { _assoc = assoc; _assoc.AutoCleanupDays = 2; } } list.UpdateWorkflowAssociation(_assoc); list.Update();
  }
  }