Suspending a Process Instance

You can suspend activity in a process instance, which causes all work items that are associated with that process instance to also become suspended, and the process flow is halted at that point. Work items that are suspended cannot be worked on, that is, they cannot be opened, allocated, re-offered, nor cancelled.

Also note that work items that are suspended become hidden in the work item list. You can display hidden work items by selecting either Only show hidden work items or Show visible and hidden work items from the View menu on the work item list.

If a work item is already open when the process instance is suspended, the work item can still be cancelled, closed or submitted:

  • If cancelled, any changes made on the work item form are discarded and the work item is returned to the work item list with a Suspended state.
  • If closed, any changes made on the work item form are saved, and the work item is returned to the work item list with a state of Suspended.
  • If submitted, any new work items that result from the process flow appear in the appropriate work item lists, but they will have a Suspended state.

The suspended work items cannot be worked on until the process instance is resumed — see Resuming a Suspended Process Instance.

Also note that if you have:

  • work items that have a timer event configured, or
  • timer events defined within the process,

and the timer event is reached while the process instance is suspended, the timer event is still processed. However, you will not see activity until the process instance has resumed. For example:

  • If the process is configured to move to the next task when the timer event has processed, the process moves to the next task when the process resumes.
  • If the task that has a timer event is set to withdraw upon expiration, the task is withdrawn when the process resumes.

Procedure

  1. From the process instance list, select one or more process instances, then click the button, or select Suspend Process Instance(s) on the Tools menu.

    A dialog is displayed to confirm that you want to suspend the selected process instance(s).

  2. Click OK to confirm.

Result

When the process instance becomes suspended, the process instance list is automatically refreshed to update the instance status. This always causes the process instance list to return to page 1 of the list, regardless the page that was displayed when you suspended the instance.