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Control Service Instances Using IIS Manager

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Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) service instances are made available through the AppFabric IIS Manager extensions through two views; tracked workflow instances and persisted workflow instances. The tracked workflow instances view does not expose control operations.

You can view workflow service instances in a persistence store in IIS Manager by using two views: Tracked WF Instances and Persisted WF Instances. The tracked workflow instance view does not expose control operations. For more information about tracked workflow instances, refer to Tracked WF Instances Page.

Persisted workflow service instances are the only workflow instances that expose control operations. A persisted workflow instance has a snapshot of its state persisted to a persistence store when its execution is paused. A persisted workflow instance can be viewed and controlled by using the control operations on the Persisted WF Instances page. For more information about persistence in AppFabric, refer to Persisted WF Instances Page.

To control workflow service instances by using IIS Manager

  1. In the IIS Manager extensions in AppFabric, double-click Services to open the Services page. For more information, refer to Services Page.

  2. Right-click the service and select View Persisted WF Instances. This brings up the Persisted WF Instances page, which enumerates the persisted workflow instances. This action will only be enabled for services running in the .NET Framework 4 application domain with persistence configured. The Persisted WF Instances page shows up all the instances (state information) stored in the persistence store. If the Persisted WF Instances page is invoked as just described, the query control will open by default displaying the first fifty (50) persisted instances that belong to that service. If the Persisted WF Instances page is invoked by clicking the metrics within the Dashboard, the instances shown are the result of specific pre-configured queries. These queries lead you eventually to the Persisted WF Instances page with the conditions pre-populated. Regardless of the entry path to the Persisted WF Instances page, you can further run custom queries using filters to locate specific instances. For more information, refer to Persisted WF Instances Page.

  3. After the specific workflow service instance is displayed, right-click that instance and select one of the operations to invoke the specific control operation. The operations available at this point are:

    • Resume. Resume a suspended workflow service instance.

    • Suspend. Suspend a running workflow service instance.

    • Cancel. Gracefully terminate a running or suspended workflow service instance by invoking cancellation handlers.

    • Terminate. Forcefully terminate a running or suspended workflow service instance without invoking cancellation handlers.

    • Delete. Permanently remove a workflow service instance from the persistence store.

    For more information about the functionality of these control operations, refer to Persisted WF Instances Page.