.NET40: Workflow-, Activity- and Instance-States of Workflow Service

This post shortly describes all different states of one workflow, activity and instance of .NET 40 Workflow Service. In general these states are produced as tracking records of so called WF and WCF tracking subsystems.

States of Workflow Foundation Tracking Subsystem

Workflow tracking records. Workflow tracking records describe the life cycle of the workflow instance. The following list has important workflow events that correspond to different states of a workflow:

• Started
• Idle
• Resumed
• Completed
• Persisted
• Unloaded
• Deleted
• Unhandled Exception
• Aborted

Activity tracking records. Activity tracking records include activity status events. The following list has important activity level events that correspond to different states of an activity within the workflow:

• Closed
• Canceled
• Faulted

Workflow Service Instance states:

• Running
  Currently processing.
• ReadyToRun.
  Ready to start processing. May be in this status during throttling or as a result of the Instance Restart Service unlocking orphaned instances
• Blocked
  Waiting for external messages or events (such as Timer)
• Suspended
  Paused due to manual user action or exception, requires manual resume Terminated/Completed. Not an actual store status as instance that terminate (user action) or complete (graceful completion of WF instance) will be removed from store.
  

States of Windows Communication Foundation Tracking Subsystem

WCF types of tracking records are: message track records and service track records.

Message track records:

• Receive
• Send
• Faulted

Service track records:

• Started
• Stopped